Homemade Butter

  I have always thought making homemade butter would be fun. In the Little House series they churned butter, and my Mom used to churn butter, it would simply be marvelously vintage-like, (even romantic) to churn butter. My obsession with vintage things started a year ago and churning butter was a definite "need to try."

  A week or so ago some of our Amish neighbors were giving away free milk because the milkman had some kind of problem and couldn't pick up the milk from their farm. They of course had far too much for their own use, so when they offered it to us my Dad went and got us some and Mom skimmed the cream from it to make butter.

 I was excited! Finally I was getting my chance, but as it turns out we don't have a churn so Mom goes and pours the cream into a quart jars and instructed us to shake it. Well I shook my jar , Diane shook that jar, Eldon shook that jar, even Mom and Dad shook that jar, and finally we had butter. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious and all, and I guess worth the effort. But oh what a let down to my high vintage-y/romantic ideals.

  In case you want to give making butter a try, here are the instructions.

  Oh, and even though it was not at all old-fashioned and dreamy, it was a very good work out.


Home Made Butter

The ingredients you need are as listed:

Cream (approximately two and half cups)
salt, to taste


Pour all your cream into a quart jar leaving space to shake the cream.

  Once you have been shaking for a while your cream should have thickened and have become considerably harder to shake.

After a bit more of shaking your cream will have formed into butter.

Pour out the butter milk and put your lump of butter into a bowl and cover with really cold tap water, chill for five to ten minutes then drain the water and work the butter by using the back of a spoon to squeeze out all the extra buttermilk. Salt your butter by sprinkling the salt over the butter and mix.

When the salt has been mixed in well you can shape your butter any way you like and store in the fridge for an hour before using, though if chilled too long you might have to soften it before it is able to be spread.

We enjoyed it on fresh, warm, homemade bread.