Homemade Butter

One thing I really miss about living in Kansas is access to farm fresh milk, cream, butter, and eggs. There was a place that was just 10-15 minutes away from my house where you could get all of that. They even had cheese, sausage, beef and ice cream! My husband and kids loved their strawberry milk, while I liked their root beer milk. I would buy their heavy cream and make coffee creamer with it! But before they started selling butter, I would buy their heavy cream, when it was marked down, to make butter.

My mom always laughs at me when I tell her I make butter. But homemade butter is an essential item when making homemade bread or biscuits right? She thinks I'm crazy sometimes. I used to just buy boxed stuff and not even blink an eye. But when we moved to Kansas, and I had wayyy too much time on my hands, I spent lots of times on the internet. The What To Expect When You're Expecting forums to be exact. I was a Hot Topics board addict. I didn't always comment, mainly because I couldn't keep up with how fast the posts were coming in, but I read all the time. We're talking stalker mode reading. I made friends with people I didn't really talk to. I felt like I knew them..

I learned so much from these ladies. But I think what stuck with the most, was food. There was a woman on there who MILLED her own flour. Who does that?! I thought to myself. I started reading all the articles they were linking. Gathering my information. I began to realize that a lot of what I was feeding our family, wasn't real food. I searched out this farm, so that we could drink fresh milk with no hormones.

I started making my own bread. Making my own pasta, pizza, chicken broth. Basically anything that I bought from the store that I could make at home, with less ingredients and less preservatives. I was making baby steps. We used to be a Rice-a-Roni as a side dish almost every night. I started making it myself with my own spices.

But I really didn't go off the deep end, so to speak, until my husband deployed. He left three weeks before our son was born. So I was alone with a new born and a preschooler. I started cloth diapering. I started buying organic everything. I could afford it, thanks to my husband being deployed. When he came home and saw what I was spending on groceries, it was a bit of a shock. So we compromised. I make what I can from scratch, and we buy what we can afford.

In the past year though, we've been incorporating Paleo into our lives. We rarely eat carbs/rice/quinoa anymore. I haven't quite convinced my kids that squash is better than noodles for spaghetti, or that cauliflower fried rice is better than the real thing, but we're getting there. We still eat dairy, but I try and make it as healthy as possible. I found a place we can get milk from that is as local as it can be in Alaska. 

Recently the store has been out of the butter I like to buy, so I decided to start making my own again. I already make coffee creamer, almond milk, bread (for the kids), why not start doing butter again.  So I bought some heavy whipping cream that had been marked down at the store. Normally I would buy it from the local place, but since the farmers market is closed for the season, I was out of options. It's super easy to make, it just takes time. If you don't have a mixer, you could probably just use an electric beater and a bowl, or put it in a glass jar and shake...I have not tried both, but they would work, just take a while!

Homemade Butter

Heavy Whipping Cream ( I used a pint in this recipe)

Pour into a mixing bowl and turn it on a low speed. Once the cream starts peaking to make whipped cream, you can turn the mixer up to a medium speed. At this point I place a kitchen towel over the bowl and go do other things in the kitchen. I don't really know how long it takes, but you'll know when it's ready. Because you will hear splashing and thudding as the butter sticks to the whisk and splashes in the buttermilk. You can either pour the buttermilk through a mesh colander, cheesecloth, or a kitchen towel. I used the colander first and then wrapped up the butter in a towel and squeezed all the milk out.

This pint yielded 5.5 oz of butter and a little over 1 cup of buttermilk. You can either use the buttermilk in the next few days, or freeze it. The butter should be fine for 2 weeks. Just be sure to store in an airtight container.

I don't salt my butter, but you can salt it to taste. Or add other seasonings for different flavor butters.