Homemade Butter

There's something about reading the Little House books that makes a person want to fry up some salt pork, pop in a pan of sourdough biscuits and weave a sunhat from strands of hay.

OK, maybe not so much, but most of the food sure does sound good.

Reading the books with Natalie is partially to blame for my latest idea to make our own butter. Also to blame is the delicious, creamy raw milk we've recently started buying. After reading about the many health benefits of unpasteurized milk, I decided to scope out a local source. I found an amazing farm with two beautiful Brown Swiss milk cows. More on our raw milk in another post.

Back to the butter:

I really strive to keep our meals and cooking simple around here. I also enjoy trying new things, especially if I can get the kids involved. So I was very excited when I found this very simple tutorial on butter making.

The directions say it takes 15-30 minutes of shaking which, honestly, was the biggest deterrent for me. But my first batch buttered up in just 7 minutes, or 10 minutes if you count the rinse, draining and scooping into a container.

Now that I can handle.

And man, is it delicious. Heavenly. Light and so very sweet.

Here's how it's done:

1. Store fresh raw milk in the fridge for at least 12 hours.

2. With a big spoon, carefully scoop off the cream into a medium-sized lidded container. The cream should fill less than 1/3 of the container, leaving room for shaking.

3. Seal the container and leave the cream on the counter for 12 hours.

4. Shake the container for 7 minutes until a chunk of butter floats in the container.

5. Rinse under cold water.

6. Work the butter along the sides of a bowl to get out the extra buttermilk.

7. Scoop into a small container and pop into the fridge.

8. (Optional): Blend with fresh fruit for Swedish treat. I hear it's amazing on pancakes. We loved it on banana muffins.