Homemade Butter

I've always wanted to make my own butter.  I think I might have made it once as a little girl, or had it sometime when I was young.  Something from my childhood got me the taste for homemade butter.  As strange as it sounds, I sometimes get cravings for homemade butter.  There's nothing quite like it.  Nowadays it's much easier to make.  (One day I will make it the manual way.)  Of course, my Grandma was the first person I called to gush to about this feat.  She shared that when she and her sisters were little, they were the butter makers.  Most of the time they shook the cream in jars, while other times they actually used the butter churn.  I opted for the modern butter church: my electric stand mixer. 

It was super easy!  The hardest part is the waiting.  But the process is amazing to see.  It only takes one ingredient really; heavy whipping cream. (2 ingredients if you want to add a little salt for flavoring.)

 Pour heavy whipping cream into mixer and turn on.  I started out on low speed.  This was a mistake.  It took forever for the cream to start thickening.  After about 30 minutes of  this (compared to the estimated 15 minutes I'd seen in other recipes,) so far all that had happened was that it got really foamy.

 I finally turned the mixer speed up to about 6 and things finally started to happen!  Peaks started to form and it started to really thicken up.
By this point, I was getting pret-ty exc-i-ted.  It was finally starting to look like butter!  From then on, things started to move pretty fast.

 The butter will start forming and clumping together and will take on a yellowish hue.  This is when the magic starts to happen.  It goes from looking like a bowl of whipped cream to a bowl of delicious, creamy butter waiting to be spread on warm fluffy rolls!

 The yellow butter will clump together and separate from the buttermilk.  (I learned from Grandma that you can save this runoff and use it later to makes cakes or anything else that calls for buttermilk.  You can save it in a recycled water bottle or any other airtight container.  It should save up to a few weeks.)

Once the butter has sufficiently clumped together, gather it all up into a ball and proceed to squeeze out all the buttermilk.  (This will help the butter keep longer.)  Run the ball of butter under cold water to rinse out the rest of the buttermilk, being sure to squeeze it all out.  For extra flavor, sprinkle a little salt over it and knead it into the butter ball.

Put the butter in a container to store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.  the 3 cups of heavy whipping cream you use should yield about one cup of delicious butter.  Use it on rolls, waffles, pancakes, rolls, muffins, crackers, toast, pancakes, waffles....(I really like pancakes and waffles...) and use it on just about anything you can think of!!  I'm taking it to Grandma's house for Sunday dinner.

Ingredients
3 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
Salt for flavoring

Directions
1. Pour whipping cream in stand mixer bowl and turn mixer on medium speed.
2. Cream will become bubbly and start to thicken.
3. Peaks will begin to form and it will be like the consistency of heavy cream.
4. Cream will take on a yellow hue and butter will start clumping together, separating from the buttermilk.
5. Gather butter together into ball and squish out all the buttermilk, rinse butter ball under cold water to remove as much buttermilk as possible.
6. Sprinkle with a little bit of salt and knead into butter ball for desired amount of flavoring.
7. Store in a container in the fridge.  Enjoy on every sort of bread product!!

Don't you feel more accomplished now, knowing you just made homemade butter??  I know I do.  I feel pretty proud of myself.  Good luck, y'all!  I know you will do wonderfully.  I have every faith in you that you will make the best butter there ever was!