Making my own butter! (merged)

rowsew

I make the kids do the butter! We make our own quite often - but more in the summer as the cream is a little bit cheaper then. You need double cream, one big jar, two small kids who need wearing out .

Have the cream at room temperature, it butters faster then.
Fill the jar about two-thirds full, screw the lid on tight.
Shake and shake and shake.... you get the idea. Less than ten mins.
First of all the cream will whip, then it will go thud, then it will start sloshing. When you get to sloshing you are at the butter stage. Keep shaking for a bit until all the little butter bits join up with one another.
Then open the jar, pour off the buttermilk -give to kids as a reward or save for a batch of scones later. Then tip the butter into a big bowl, fill with very cold water, and wash the lump of butter until ALL the buttermilk has come out - the water should run clear. If you don't do this the butter will go rancid very quickly.
Then find a suitable clean container, pat your butter into it and cover with greaseproof paper and put in the fridge. If you want to keep it longer then add a layer of foil, and put in the freezer.

PS You can add salt if you want, but I find it hard to gauge how much, so I don't bother.

Have fun xx

louisa_

I'll be looking out for discounted cream after xmas too - I do generally like slightly salted butter but freshly churned butter is so nice that I don't think it needs it.

And while you can't make butter from blue top milk, you can make cheese from that - some heat then a splash of lemon juice can make paneer for use in curries, and the whey can be used in baking etc. That takes a while to drain (in a cheese cloth or similar) but other than that, only takes a few minutes to make so something I do whenever I spot deeply discounted milk.

WeegieWumman

I occasionally have butter on hot toast because it melts. Once in a blue moon I'll take a very thin scrape of butter in a morning roll.
I dislike the feeling of solidified grease in my mouth. It makes me want to retch.

MrsCrafty

I managed to get 18 300ml pots of double cream from Mr T for 22p each. From this I got 14 packs (sort of normal size) of butter.

Well worth it so thanks to everyone who suggested it. There are loads of shops selling really cheap cream at the mo' so I can't recommend doing this enough and you can freeze it.

I put the cream in a food processor but have used the whish attachment on my hand mixer before now. I had so much this time that it was necessary to use the FP which I borrowed.

I did 4 pots of cream at a time, poured out the buttermilk for scones and such and put the hardened cream into a bowl. Then I ran the cold tap over it and covered it with water whilst mashing it with the potato masher, pour out water and keep doing this until the water runs clear. This stops your butter going off. Then freeze for up to 3 months. If you want salted butter add the salt after freezing.

I know this will be added to an older thread but I was so excited that I had to share:beer:

Oh and I wrapped it in greaseproof paper and rolled it rather than make squares.

MandM90

Brilliant tip, thanks

thriftwizard

Wow, well done, what a bargain! I'm intrigued by the idea of using a food processor to do it; when we (my DDs & I) tried to make it by hand, using an old butter jar with paddles inside, it took forever and we probably used up way more calories than we produced!

katieowl_2

What gadget/blade/thingumebob did you use in your food processor? I'd give this a go if I could use the magimix?

Kate

MrsCrafty

katieowl wrote: »

What gadget/blade/thingumebob did you use in your food processor? I'd give this a go if I could use the magimix?

Kate

I used a magimix with the metal chopping blade it whizzes and magically produces butter with liquid (buttermilk). The big trick is making sure that after you have tipped the milk out of the bowl, getting the rest out.

Everything has to be cold.

rosie383

Waow!! You did so much better than me. I have been on the lookout for reduced cream, and all I found so far were a few 300mls for 54p each. I bought them anyway and used 2 to make butter and buttermilk.
Just made some griddle scones ( coconut and cherry ones) to my late Mum's recipe as I am still oven-less and wanted to use the buttermilk.

What else can |I use the buttermilk in? Can I just put it in any MW cake mixture? Still have about 1/4-1/2 pt left.

BTW: I just did mine in the FP using the metal blade thing. Just keep processing it until it turns into a big lump of butter.
Has anyone else noticed that sometimes you whisk cream, and it turns thick after about 30 secs, other times it takes minutes? Even when you have 2 from the same date, and use them both from the fridge. Weird.

MrsCrafty

rosie383 wrote: »

Waow!! You did so much better than me. I have been on the lookout for reduced cream, and all I found so far were a few 300mls for 54p each. I bought them anyway and used 2 to make butter and buttermilk.
Just made some griddle scones ( coconut and cherry ones) to my late Mum's recipe as I am still oven-less and wanted to use the buttermilk.

What else can |I use the buttermilk in? Can I just put it in any MW cake mixture? Still have about 1/4-1/2 pt left.

BTW: I just did mine in the FP using the metal blade thing. Just keep processing it until it turns into a big lump of butter.
Has anyone else noticed that sometimes you whisk cream, and it turns thick after about 30 secs, other times it takes minutes? Even when you have 2 from the same date, and use them both from the fridge. Weird.

You can use buttermilk in breadmaking as the liquid bit, makes a softer loaf.