Beautiful Butter!

  I said I would report back, so here it is. Butter- creamy, sweet, a little salty and oh sooooo cheap to make! I'm pretty excited about this! I started with about 2/3 of a carton of heavy whipping cream- the larger carton cost $3.50. I poured it in to the food processor, added about two teaspoons of salt and turned that baby on!

I let it run for several minutes and I could see it going from liquid to solid. It started to turn slightly yellow also.

Once it was mostly solid with very little liquid I poured it into a bowl, which I had covered with a cotton towel. This allowed the liquid to drain into the bowl and kept the butter in the towel. I wrapped the butter tightly and let the liquid continue to drain out. Once it was pretty solid, I lifted the butter, wrapped in the towel out of the bowl.

I ended up with this lightly yellow, soft butter. I scraped the butter from the cloth into a plastic container. You can stop right here and just use the butter right out of the bowl. I would definitely recommend refrigerating it to let it harden a bit.

 I however could NOT stop there, for, my littles were screaming for conformity to the grocery store butter. "Mama! It should be a rectangle, it needs to be in a shape, we can't leave it in the bowl, that doesn't look like butter at all!!!" I heard their cries and decided to comply. So, I wrapped the butter in the wax paper and shaped it into rectangular logs.... "just like the grocery store."

 So, into the refrigerator it went to harden. We were all anxiously awaiting it's transformation this morning! And here you have it folks... home made butter, shaped and ready to put in the butter dish.

So let me break down the cost for you- $2.50 for 4 sticks of salted sweet cream butter in the store brand. Or, $3.50 for one large carton of heavy whipping cream which makes 7 equally sized home made sticks of butter. So you probably won't be able to pay off your mortgage with the savings from making your own butter, but it is fun, easy and tastes great! Give it a try! Oh, and don't forget to make specialty butters too- just mix in some herbs, garlic salt, cinnamon, whatever you like! The flavored butters would be super sweet little gifts if you put it in a cute little glass jar with a ribbon and a loaf of home made bread.... the possibilities are endless!