Hey... You Should Make Some Butter

Now you are asking, "Why on EARTH would I make butter?"

4 reasons:
1.  Because it it FUN
2.  Because it is EASY
3.  Because it is WAYYY healthier than say....MARGARINE...   (plus it tastes a WHOLE lot better in your recipes)
and 4.  Because I said, "Hey, you should make some butter."

You need 2 things:

cheesecloth  (or any loosely woven clean cloth)
Mixer  (Use your Kitchen Aid with the wire whip)
     I suppose if you do not have a mixer with a wire whip, you can do it by hand with a whisk or with a butter churn, but that makes it work instead of the "EASY" I mentioned above.

Ingredients:  Oh wait--- there is ONLY ONE ingredient!!

Heavy cream  (How ever much you want.  You can usually plan on about half as much butter as the amount of cream you start with, depending on the fat content of the cream.)

Directions:

Whip the cream.

When you get whipped cream, DON'T STOP, just keep whipping it another 5 minutes or so.  At some point, you will hear the tell tale splashing noise indicating that it has separated.  Stop and drain the liquid. (That is the whey. You can save it and use it for recipes that call for whey, but I don't have any of those, so I just drain it off and dump it.) 


Gather up the solid parts into a cheesecloth.  Twist the top of the cloth and give it a mighty squeeze.  Squeeze  out as much liquid as you can.  Rinse under running water and squeeze again.  Rinse until the water runs clear.  If it is not rinsed well, it will spoil faster.

Look.  You have butter!!




  Now go make some cookies... or mold it into pretty blocks of butter for your next dinner party.  Or just leave it in a blob and spread it on your toast.