Making Butter - The Kind You Eat!

I made butter and I feel so domestic! :) The kids and I worked on this little project together and I just felt like sharing with all of you. I always believed that making butter was much more difficult than this. I remember having to crank and crank the butter churn for my mom. It took forever! But this was very simple.

Last night I poured some organic heavy whipping cream into a quart jar. I put the lid on and let it set out for 12 hours/overnight. This is the only time that planning ahead comes into play here.

I opened it this morning and it smelled a bit sour, just as it was supposed to. I started shaking it with well-definined shakes. About three minutes later we had solid butter and buttermilk.



I drained off the buttermilk into the little jar.


From there I added a bit of filtered water to the butter and "washed" the butter. I then drained it again and the result was this "cleaned" butter.


I prefer salted butter so I added some sprinkles of fine pink himalayan salt that is supposed to be so good for you. The kids and I shared a bagel to give it a test and it was very yummy!



I have so many variations in mind...add olive oil to have some spreadable butter in the fridge, add honey to make honey butter, add herbs, etc. Of course, I could do the same with the regular organic butter we buy at Costco but it seems more fun that I started with a jar of heavy cream and ended up with butter.

We buy the half-gallon containers of organic cream at Costco and I figure if I made my own, it would be cheaper than buying the organic butter at Costco. Plus it was just plain fun!

My 8 year old son took these pictures for me and I think he did a really good job!