It was raining. We were bored. I was checking out blogs and the munchkin was watching TV. Suddenly, I shouted, "We've GOT to do this!"
I don't think the munchkin even looked up.
"Tell Daddy I'm going to the store, and I'll be back in a minute."
By the time she said, "Huh?" I was gone.
I came back soaking wet but carrying a prize - a pint of heavy cream. And, well...a few more things. I don't know about you, but I've never, ever been able to go to the grocery store and buy only one thing. But, I digress.
"Do you remember reading in Little House In The Big Woods about how the Ingalls family made butter? Well, we're about to make butter."
"COOL!"
I found the idea at Houseful of Nicholes. It looked easy, and it was! We decided to try two methods and compare the results. For the record, I used ultra-pasteurized heavy whipping cream from the grocery store - no special brand. We put about 1/3 of it into a plastic container with a tight sealing lid and a clean marble. I gave it to the munchkin and said, "Shake this 'til you can't hear the marble anymore." She shook it all over the house, and we sang "Shake, shake, shake...shake, shake, shake...shake your BUTTAH! Shake your BUTTAH!" It wasn't long at all before we couldn't hear the marble anymore. We opened it up and looked inside. We had whipped cream.
"Is that butter?"
"Nope. Now, you have to shake it some more until the buttermilk separates."
So she shook it all over the house for another several minutes until we heard sloshing. When we opened the container, this is what we found.
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We drained the buttermilk off and shook a little more, and drained more buttermilk off. Then we rinsed all of the rest of the buttermilk off and marveled at the miracle of butter!
We put the rest of the cream into the stand mixer. My results were pretty much exactly like the Nicholes'. (Check out her great pictures.) I knew we had reached the goal when the mixer started slinging buttermilk all over the kitchen!
Mix in a little salt, and you're good to go!
