Homemade Butter!

So it is Sunday afternoon, there is nothing on television and I am absolutely bored out of my mind. We were supposed to be still out in the country, but ended up rushing back to town this morning at about 1:30 because K had a fever of 104.8 F. During the 45 minute drive, poor K was sick three times. My sister and I sat at the hospital with him until 4 am, while he either chatted our ears off or slept. The doctor found he has an ear infection on each side, thankfully not worse because he was also presenting signs of appendicitis (he was saying his tummy hurt around his belly button, when the doctor pressed he said it hurt there, but when he asked more probing questions and found the 'ear bunnies' he ruled it out, but said to keep an eye on it just in case). So, poor K did not get to go fishing with Grampie this morning, but he did get to plant potatoes last night with Nanny. We are going to try again for a fishing adventure next weekend.

So, i digress, but back to being bored out my mind this afternoon. I picked up a copy of Chatelaine to look at the recipes, and found an article about using your blender. Recipes for slushes, martinis and little blurb for butter! It basically said to pour 1 cup of whipping cream into your blender and let it go for about 5 minutes until it turns into butter. Here is my result, but I went about it a bit differently.

I ran down to the store to get a container of whipping cream, It was only 2.50 for 500 mL, not a bad price (compared to butter). The recipe said to use only 1 cup, even though the container was closer to 2, i dumped it all into my blender and started it up.

After about a minute and a half, it suddenly went super thick. After all, it was whipping cream. I kept having to start and stop it, pushing the cream into the blades, and after another 2 or 3 minutes, it was not doing anything. I took a taste, and it kind of tasted like butter, but not really. I blended for another minutes or two. Maybe it was supposed to be soft butter? I pulled it out of the blender into a bowl, and was thinking of refrigerating it when I saw my mixer. Maybe? So, into the mixer it went. The below picture was after one minute at setting 6, it is a bit blurry but you can see it is getting a curdled look.

I stopped the mixer, scraped the sides and let it go again, turning to the sink to dismantle and clean the blender. No more than two minutes later, I checked the mixer and realized milk was spraying everywhere! I screwed it up, it separated!! I pulled the whisk out and realized what was on it was butter! Success!! When the recipe said you had to drain it, i didn't realize it would mean so much liquid, but i am so happy it worked!

So, i wiped up the buttermilk from everything, poured it through a small strainer and then mashed it together with my hands and squeezed out some more of the milk. Finally, I had a block of butter! Here is the picture again, I am so proud!

I also had about a cup of milk left over. I called my Mom to find out if this was buttermilk and could be used (she grew up on a farm), and she said it could; so now I am going to make some buttermilk biscuits. Yummy!

So now I am starting to feel like a farmer, helping to plant potatoes last night and making butter today. Here is a picture of K planting.

He said the little eyes growing out of the potatoes 'freak me out'. Poor kid :-) he was quite impressed by the bug net we put over him, the black flies will carry you away out there! I love my city, no flies!!

So, aside from a visit to the ER this morning, I have had a good weekend. Hope everyone else can say the same!