Butter Makes it Better!

Well, I'm pretty sure I hit my peak as a domestic goddess today.
I've been moving on up ever since PW (that's  Pioneer Woman) started showing me her ways but today, I think I outdid myself.
I certainly made her proud, that's for sure!

I, along with the help of the neighbor kids, made Butter.  Yes, I said butter.
We milked the cow, placed it in the churner and took that stick and went to town churning.
No, we didn't.  We don't have access to a COW!  And if we did, I might get mud, or something MUCH worse on my shoes if I milked one!

But we did use heavy cream from the local Publix and a good ol' mason jar to make fresh homemade butter.
Jason was a total skeptic and said it would never work.
It wasn't nearly as complicated as one might think.
Just in case you ever run out of butter in the midst of making any one of P-dubs lovely recipes (because they ALL contain copious amounts of butter), then you can make some of your very own.  Assuming you have heavy cream on standby, as we all should!  Can I get an amen?

Ok, here's what you are going to need:

A mason jar with a lid

Heavy Cream

a pinch of salt (if you wish)

Time and energy to *shake what yo mama gave ya*!

(your arms, I mean use your arms.)

You are going to fill the mason jar to about 3/4 full so you have enough room to let it shake around and get whipped.  The cream, right now let's focus on whipping the cream, the kids will come later!  

You will need to move it and shake it for about 20 minutes.  It is fun and exciting to take turns doing this.  We set a timer and everyone took their turn.  Somehow, I seemed to finish everyone's turn for them.  

 After about 20 minutes, we took a peek and a taste.  It was surely whipped cream.  It was salty and creamy and fluffy.  

 We placed the lid back on and started shaking again.  By we, I mean I started shaking it again, the kids had lost all interest and gone back outside.  I walked around shaking it for another 5-10 minutes thinking is this going to work.  It didn't feel like anything was even moving around it was so fluffy. 


I peeked again and to my surprise, the milk was beginning to have a grainy appearance.  I quickly re-tightened the lid and shook my heart out.  I could feel the butter solidifying inside the jar.  

When I stopped, there it was!  It was like magic, a large clump of smooth yellow butter was in the middle of the jar.  It is surrounded by a white liquid that remains which is butter milk and can be used to make buttermilk pancakes which would taste wonderful with none other than...homemade BUTTER!

To perfect your butter, you can run cold water over the yellow butter and drain the liquid. 

What results is perfectly delicious, rich and creamy BUTTER.

The kids were pretty impressed, I don't think they believed it would work either.  And now that I've done all that shaking, I'm pretty sure I've earned myself a teaspoon or two on a big fat yeast roll.  Yummy!

Hey, I did make it to the gym today.  Thank goodness.

A likely better tutorial and the one that I used can be found here.

Now, get out there and shake up some butter of your very own!