making butter

I made butter today! Well, Ingrid's beautiful KitchenAid stand mixer did most of the work (since my stand mixer is dead), but I did a little bit to help it along. She was kind enough to bring the mixer along to our crafting afternoon, and it was put to good use (and Phillip had a great time watching it.)

It's unbelievably easy, and I'm way more excited about this than is reasonable. I poured some whipping cream (or heavy cream, as it's also known) into the mixer, and mixed on medium-high. The whole process took maybe 15 minutes, tops. Here's the butter separating from the buttermilk, after it goes past being whipped.

This is the buttermilk, after it's been separated from the butter (I know, buttermilk in a white bowl does not a great photo make.) After the butter was squeezed a bit in cheesecloth to extract the remaining buttermilk, I made it into a little lump, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge. I made this batch unsalted, so I'll use it for cooking. I'm not sure what the salt to cream ratio would be if you wanted salted butter. Yum!