I made Butter!!

Ok, I know you can buy butter in the store!!  But I am from the school that it is so much better homemade!  Again, I know it is a lot of effort to do homemade, BUT it really is worth the effort!  Who would have thought making butter was so easy.  No, you do not have to go out and buy a butter churn!!  We are living in the 21st Century!!!  I guess, if you REALLY wanted to buy a butter churn, you can, they do look charming in a "country" kitchen . . .

Homemade butter is so easy - takes about 10 minutes to make - REALLY!  Now, have I ever lied to you???

All you need is heavy whipping cream - that's it!!  Just two cups of heavy whipping cream.  If you really want to be fancy, buy ORGANIC heavy whipping cream.  My local store just carries plain ole heavy whipping cream.    Like I said, all you need is two (2) cups of heavy whipping cream - that's it!!  Well, and a stand mixer helps!!

Pour the whipping cream in your mixing bowl and attach the whisk attachment.

Put the mixer on medium-high speed and let it run.  It will make really nice whipping cream - don't stop it!!  You want to "over-whip" the whipping cream (try to say that fast 3 times!). 

It will start to look like this:

You can see the butter curds start forming and the liquid is the buttermilk.  At this stage, you want to strain the buttermilk, so we will transfer this to a strainer.

You will knead and squeeze the butter until all the liquid is out.  I was told also to rinse it with very cold water. 

So, two cup of heavy whipping cream produced 6.80 ounces of butter - not quite half a pound.  The butter will last about a week to a week and a half. 

The fun part is that you now can add herbs to make herbal butter - salt or leave it unsalted.  Now wasn't this fun!  Better than a trip to the grocery store, I bet!!