Okay friends, let me be completely honest and transparent here with you. This was quite the ordeal! Let's start from the beginning.
I ordered this butter churner quite some time ago. Made it through a move without getting lost, but unfortunately not without getting broken. So, off to the internets I went in search of a replacement. I even emailed the company, to which they replied they did not have a replacement jar to be able to purchase (sad day). Well, my dad being the wonderful researcher that he is, found a jar that looked like it would work. Upon further looking (in the comments below) we found that it would indeed work for what we needed. Replacement ordered. Once my replacement arrived I set about to make home made butter. So, the instructions with the churner said that it would be best to let your heavy cream sit out for 1-2 hours before beginning the the process. I set out my heavy cream and got to work on a fall craft (which I will be sharing in another post).
Two hoursish have now gone by and I have pumped myself up to get this done! 10-12 minutes isn't to bad, I totally got this! HA! Was that ever an understatment. Y'all my arms are still hurting from how much I had to crank (I know, I need to workout my arms more), AND my cream had BARELY thinkend up after about 12 minutes. At this particular juncture I was feeling a bit defeated. Then I remembered that I'd read somewhere that a lady used her blender to make her butter and she said she would never go back to doing it any other way.
With hope reignited I pull out my ninja blender, mind you it's around 11:30 pm when I start to do this. I work night shift, so I am use to being up during these crazy late hours. I pour my heavy cream into a smoothie cup to be able to blend up my cream. And boy howdy, I'll tell ya withing a minute of the blender going on low the cream was already chunking up. now the blender was quite a bit louder than I wanted it to be, being so late. So I took the blender into my room and closed the doors behind me in and effort to help buffer the noise. I blended it for another minute or two (I probably should have gone a little longer).
Once I was done blending, I transferred it to my cheese cloth and then ran cold water over it to remove any access buttermilk from the butter. They say to rise till the water runs clear. Not sure I did it quite right, but did the best I could. Next I got my butter paddles and started to pat and mix in some salt while attempting to form my butter. Then I realized I didn't need to form it, because it's going into my butter dish! In my beautiful butter went. my dad happened to be up and tried my freshly made butter on some bread I'd made earlier in the day and he absolutly LOVED it.
But that's not the end of the story. Because I was a little to ambitous with how much heavy cream I would need, I'd left the entire container out to cool to room temperature. I didn't want to put the cream back in the fridge, to be on the safe side, I decided to make the rest into butter. What a mess this made! I pulled out my blender jug (instead of the small smoothie one) and poured the cream in. Back to my room I went to blend away. Now this time around it was about double the amount I had before. As I am blending I can see the colors changing from a white to a yellow, its starting to chunk up. All great signs that we are headed in the right direction. As I keep blending, it's not looking like everyone elses looked on the videos I'd watched. There was still quite a bit of liquid and it wasn't clumping together like I thought it should. I keep trucking on! Finally the liquid has reduced considerably and the cream looks like a creamy, SUPER soft butter. Listening to my instincts, I stop (not sure if this was right or not) and take it to the kitchen to finish processing.
I wish I would have gotten picture for y'all, but I was so stressed out about trying to make this work and not losing what I'd made that taking pictures was the last thing on my mind. When I poured the butter into my cheese cloth to attmept to squeeze out the buttermilk, my butter came right through the cheese cloth! Well, crap! So I did the only thing I knew to do, I pour cold water into the bowl in an attempt to cool off the butter and rinse out the buttermilk. After making quite the mess, it worked! I saved the butter, added my salt and straight to the fridge it went. Next time (yes, there will be a next time!) I will be trying it with cold heavy cream straigh from the fridge to see if that makes a difference in how the butter churns.
After all was said and done. This was quite the adventure to say the least. Took a lot of hard work for what feels like such little butter, but y'all, the taste is sooooo much better. I don't know why, but it's just got this richer and fresher tast than store bought butter. Completely worth it. And next time I'll do better and things will go smoother! Have you made home made butter? What was your first time like? Do you have a favorite way to prepare your butter (flavor)? Let me know in the comments below! I'd love to hear from you.
List of items used:
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