I just made butter [smug emoticon]

[PrettyCandlesAndTinselToo]

And dh, my country bumpkin, who used to walk across fields to get to school, whose parents have allotments and grow almost everything they eat, whose mum is the Perfect Cook, tried to pretend he wasn't watching me. But afterwards he said "Is that it? Is that really all there is to making butter? It never occurred to me that you could make butter at home!"

[mylifewithmangers]

Congrats, and how satisfying is that!

Brings back memories - when I was a kid we had a big glass butter churn, with wooden beaters and a big black egg shaped gear and handle on top. All us kids would take it in turns to churn it whilst we watched evening telly
Those were the days

[ErnestTheBavarian]

erm well done.

Why?

(how?)

why???

[booyhohoho]

how do you make butter?

[c0rnsillky]

what did you use?
My gran used to make her own butter with a churn. My mum is still addicted to buttermilk(the left overs).

[PrettyCandlesAndTinselToo]

Why? Because I could . Because its mildly entertaining and I like doing that sort of thing. Also I want to support a local farm shop, and they sell their own milk andcream, but not butter.

How? By over-beating double cream. Really very easy when you've got a mixer or food processor. I used my Kenwood Chef and just left it going for about 10 minutes. The cream whips, then overbeats and looks a bit curdled, then, quit suddenly, it splits into lumps of glorious yellow butter floating in buttermilk. Line a sieve with a piece of butter muslin, pour the butter in (deffo save the buttermilk - I'm turning that into cultured buttermilk, mmm-mmmm!) and squeeze out as much liquid as poss. Then put it in a bowl under cool running water and give it a bit of a pummelling with a spatula. This bit is not necessary if you're going to use the butter immediately, but it keeps much better and is better for frying if you get rid of all the buttermilk. Then squeeze out all the water by squashing it in a fresh piece of butter muslin and press into a butter dish or shape in some other way.

I never bother salting, but youcan pop it back in the cleaned and dried mixer and beat in a little salt or other flavouring, if you wish.

Ridiculously easy and absolutely pointless, as it's no different to shop-bought. Just fun. And nice for the dc to understand a bit more about where our food comes from.

[CMOTdibbler]

My mum used to make all our butter (we had goats, so loads of excess milk) in her food processor with the blade, not the beater. Took a couple of minutes. Being goats milk butter, it was totally white though.

I really enjoyed beating it with the butter paddles - but not as much as mum I suspect

[Flumptious]

Ooh, I used to love doing this! On a smaller scale than you Pretty. I just put the cream in a kilner jar and shook til my arms ached, the dh carried on til we had butter!
After squeezing and and rinsing and salting.

Was lovely on home made bread, and we felt so proud1

[booyhohoho]

ooh, I'm going to do this tomorrow.

[spikemomma]

Do you have a cow?

I think it's brilliant and a lovely memory for your kids. Go for it butter girl!

[PrettyCandlesAndTinselToo]

No, but I did milk one once. It was on a petting farm, and I was the only member of the audience who succeeded in doing it. I nearly PMSL, because I was bfing dd at the time, and it was exactly like hand-expressing - only on an obscenely larger scale!