How to make your own butter

I have this weird obsession with pioneer days. Like, pioneer times, I mean — basically how the world worked before the Internet, the telephone, refrigeration. I have been known to say things like, “Well, in pioneer times they didn’t have [insert modern convenience here]. And they got by just fine.” I think this is practice for whenever I become a mom someday. That sentence was just made to be said to an eight-year-old child playing video games at the dinner table.

Anyway: last week I came across a blog post on how to make butter. And they made it sound so easy, I thought, why not? Show me my Laura Ingalls Wilder floppy bonnet and long skirt. (If only I had such things.)

So, last Friday, I followed the directions and poured a liter of heavy cream into my standing mixer. I turned it on high. I went to my kitchen table and surfed the Internet for maybe 10 minutes.

Went back to my mixer, and saw the butter had started to separate from the cream. And it had started to slosh around, spraying cream all over my nearby toaster oven, and the kitchen wall. Eeeee! I quickly formed a tent around the mixer with plastic wrap, changed out the whip for a paddle, and went back to my computer. (My Google Reader keeps me endlessly busy.)

Just a few minutes later, I checked on the mixer and found soft yellow butter, floating in a pool of cream.

BUTTER. I HAD MADE MY OWN BUTTER.

I felt like standing on the kitchen table and pounding on my chest. In a matter of minutes, I, your humble kitchen servant, had turned cream into rich, clean-tasting butter. Granted, this was not the best butter I’d ever had. It was nice enough, very similar to Land O Lakes. But still: I had made it.

On a giddy butter high, I decided to make ice cream with the leftover buttermilk. Unfortunately it didn’t have the tang of real buttermilk — it was milky and slightly sweet — but the Internet told me that if I left the bowl in a warm place for two days, I’d have fresh, homemade buttermilk. Maybe I’ll try that next time. Perhaps when I make homemade cultured butter.

My own little butter ball, meanwhile, ended up in a batch of homemade dark chocolate brownies. When I added the butter to my pot of melted chocolate, I almost thought my head would explode.

A certain someone later enjoyed licking the bowl.

Butter recipe below.

Homemade butter
Instructions adapted from Hedonia

1. Take one liter of the best cream you can find, and pour it into the bowl of your standing mixer affixed with the balloon whisk attachment. Wrap your mixer motor in plastic, as to avoid unfortunate incidents later. Turn the motor on high, and go away and check your email.

2. The cream will first turn into whipped cream, and then the butter solids will start to separate from the milk. Once you see thickish, solid particles floating in your mixer bowl, stop the mixer, remove the whisk and affix the paddle attachment. Lower the mixer speed to medium-low (I put it on three) and proceed with your butter-making. In a matter of minutes, the butter will solidify.

3. Drain the butter from the butter milk, and salt to taste — or not; I didn’t add any — and then store in an airtight container. Smear on a homemade biscuit and rejoice in your abilities to build one of life’s little luxuries from scratch.