Home made butter is turning into one of my favorite things to make around the kitchen, mostly because there is only one ingredient required. The first time I made my own I had a hard time telling when it was really done. Here are a few pictures showing what happens over the course of the 20 minutes of shaking the heavy cream:



Shaking the cream in a sealed container for the first few minutes will start to work air into the liquid. It will be bubbly and a little thicker than how it started.



Eventually, you'll end up with some thick whipped cream. It will be hard to shake at this stage, but eventually it will start to break down.



The contents of the container will be silent during the whipped cream stage, but after a few more minutes of shaking it will finally make a sloshing sound. This indicates that the cream is separating.



Eventually, fine grained curds of butter will form in the liquid. When this happens it means that you're only a few minutes away from being done.



With a few more shakes bigger clumps form and the liquid separates further. Eventually, it's possible to drain off the buttermilk.

I learned last week that it's the concentration of a particular type vitamin A that gives butter its pale yellow color. Goat's milk has a different form of vitamin A, so butter formed from it stays white.



I used just under 1 cup of heavy cream and in the end it yielded about 1/2 cup of butter and 1/2 cup of buttermilk.

Labels: food

posted by Alison 5/25/2009 09:23:00 AM : (4) comments : splink