Butter

A while back, Amy posted about making her own butter on her blog, and I wanted to try it to. Yesterday was the day, except that I couldn’t find a jar big enough for 16-oz. of heavy cream. The store didn’t have any 8-oz cartons of cream. I ended up using an empty 2-liter bottle, which worked out really well. I poured the cream in, screwed the lid on, an started shaking…. and shaking and shaking and shaking. Didn’t even take two minutes for my arms to get tired, but I kept going. Sara wanted to help, and she got to shake for a minute, then me again, and then Greg for a few minutes, then me again. At first you could hear the cream sloshing around in there, but the sound disappeared more and more, until it sounded like I was shaking an empty bottle. Hmm, what is going on? Did I mess it up? Heavy whipping cream IS the same as heavy cream…. right? Yes, has to be! I didn’t want to quit, so while I was shaking and shaking, I managed to pull Amy’s blog up on the computer (thankfully I bookmarked that post and saved myself a few clicks). I read through it again, while shaking and shaking and shaking, and yup, she mentioned thick whipped cream. OK, I’m doing it right. So I shake and shake and shake some more, until…. thump! YES! There’s that thump Amy talked about! We have butter!!! But do I keep shaking, or am I done? I’m not sure, so I shake it a few more times, just in case. I poured out the liquid, cut the top portion of the bottle off and used a rubber spatula to squeeze as much of the buttermilk out as possible, then spread the butter into a container and refrigerated until dinner.  It was the second best butter I’ve ever had! (The best butter was when we vacationed in Austria when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Yes, it was so good, I still remember it to this day! It was home made butter as well, but freshly made, not from a carton of heavy cream).

14. October, 2008 | Categories: October | Tags: Butter, Food Photography, Making Your Own Butter, Photography | 19 Comments