Make Butter At Home!

Bear with me folks, we're hoping to get a good DSLR soon. But in the meantime, iPhone photos are going to have to do. 

The longer I'm in this healthy/natural/frugal living lifestyle, the more I learn that we have gotten so lazy!

There are so many things that used to be made by hand at home or by members of the community but now, everything is bought at the store, made in China. Simple, cheap things that take a very short amount of time to make/do. 

Like butter.  

Butter is incredibly easy to make! 

Let me show you. 

Buy some heavy cream and grab an empty salsa/spaghetti/jam jar from your stash in the cabinet. 

(What? I'm the only one who has one of those?) 

Organic and local is best but this was the best I could find. 

Let the cream sit out overnight or about 8-12 hours. Sounds weird but that's how we do it.

Fill the jar about halfway with cream and secure the lid VERY TIGHTLY. 

Be sure to adopt a steely look of intense concentration!

Now shake it like a Polaroid picture! And then keep shaking. 

We divided it equally into four old salsa jars because there were four of us makin' butta. 

After a couple of minutes you'll see butter start to form!! Keep shaking! 

Pour out the liquid. But not into the sink because that's pure buttermilk! Save that in another jar. 

Now you can really see the butter. At this point you may want to mush the butter around with a knife to really get the buttermilk out. You can even put a little water in the jar and shake for another little bit. You just want to be sure to get all the buttermilk out or else it causes the butter to spoil faster. 

Now that you're butter is done, flavor it! We kept one jar as just plain butter, which was delicious, a salted butter, and a honey butter. The four of us ended up devouring one jar of butter (it was maybe 6 tablespoons or so) on toast because it was so fresh and perfect! 

The jar on the right is full of the buttermilk we got out of it! That's a ton of butter AND buttermilk for the price of heavy cream. That's a good deal to me! 

And there you have it, delicious, fresh, creamy butter! I think next I'm going to try making homemade mayonnaise! 

Don't forget to save that buttermilk! I don't use buttermilk very often so I froze it in an ice cube tray so I have it when I need it. 

Fresh butter on homemade bread. YUM!

Enjoy!

For an awesome and in depth video to understand the science behind making butter, watch this video. 

What's something you prefer to make fresh at home? 

Till next time,

Catherine

I've linked up to Swap N Share Sunday Week 27 with Spatulas on Parade!

I've linked up to Less Laundry, More Linking #11 with Life After Laundry and Sensational Creations!

Bake: Herbed Wheat Buttermilk Biscuits

One of my favorite food bloggers is Rachel Cooks. If you've never seen any of her recipes, you need to check her out now! You can find the original recipe HERE. She posted this recipe recently and her biscuits looked so good I knew I had to try it! I used whole wheat flour in my recipe to make it a little healthier. They're so yummy! Fortunately I had the willpower to put them into the freezer before my husband and I ate them all fresh from the oven!

Keep reading for my version!

Ingredients:

• 4 cups whole wheat flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-5 Tablespoons dried parsley and chives, whatever combo you want
• 12 Tablespoons softened butter
• 1 1/2 cups cold buttermilk
• 2 Tablespoons of melted butter (for brushing biscuits with)

Directions: 

Preheat your oven to 450º F. 

Add all of the dry ingredients together in a medium sized mixing bowl. 

Mix them up.

Add in the wet ingredients. 

Mix well.

Roll it out onto a lightly floured surface. It should be about 1/2"-3/4" thick.

Use your cookie cutter...or in my case, jar lid, and cut out biscuits.

Form extras into dough and roll out again, messing with it as little as possible so you don't warm it up. 

Depending on how thick you make the dough, you can get anywhere from 10-24 biscuits. The original recipe got 8-9 3" biscuits but I made mine thinner and got 24.

Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown around the tops and edges. If you have two sheets worth, be sure to rotate them halfway through so they both bake evenly. (Sorry for the blurry photos.)

Take them out of the oven and brush butter on the tops of each biscuit. As you can see, they all have character! 

And somehow I managed to get a few monster biscuits in there!

Drool.

These biscuits go well with everything! You could make them into breakfast biscuits, use Italian seasoning for a pasta dinner, add cheddar cheese....oh yum. I think I'll be adding the cheese next time! These biscuits are guaranteed to please either way!

What do you make with buttermilk? Do you have a family recipe passed down for the best biscuits or rolls?

Till next time,
Catherine