Did you know you can make your own homemade butter in a KitchenAid mixer or food processor?!! It is fun & easy and tastes SO much better than the store bought stuff!
Okay, so maybe I just tend to get overly excited about butter in general, but I am pretty sure that making homemade butter in my Kitchen-Aid is both the coolest and the most domestic thing I’ve ever done. Just when I didn’t think it was possible to love an appliance even more….I mean really, what’s better than homemade butter? Mmmmmmmm…..butter……
But I digress.
It was seriously so easy that I see a lot more butter making in our future. Since this was technically a homeschool activity (and had no selfish motivations whatsoever!), we tried to follow the instructions from Little House in the Big Woods as closely as we could. Of course considering that we didn’t have a cow or a real butter churn, or even a wooden bowl and paddle, we did a lot of improvising.
We used a quart of heavy cream, which made approximately a pound of butter and about 2 and 1/2 cups of buttermilk. I paid $5.99 for the cream at Publix, which was a lot, but next time I’d probably stock up at Sam’s Club, where it is just under $3 a quart. I’ve heard Aldi has super cheap cream as well. We also grated a carrot to add yellow coloring because that is the way Ma Ingalls did it, but next time I would probably skip that step!
How to Make Homemade Butter
Here is what you need:
1 carrot (optional) 1/4 c. milk (optional) 1 quart heavy cream 3/4 teaspoon salt
Step 1 (optional): Peel & finely grate a carrot. Heat in small saucepan with 1/4 cup milk until milk is bubbly. Use a clean cheesecloth to strain orange-colored milk into the bowl of your stand mixer. Discard shredded carrot.
Step 2: Pour cream into bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Add salt. Cover mixer with a towel–trust me on this one, it will be messy! Turn mixer on high.
Step 3: Continue mixing, checking on mixture frequently. It will first turn to whipped cream, then begin to get grainy and separate into butter and buttermilk, and the splashing will get much worse. The butter is ready when it sticks in a clump to the paddle.
Step 4: Place a colander over a bowl, then strain the buttermilk off of the butter. (For a GREAT recipe using buttermilk, try these super yummy refrigerator raisin bran muffins–they are our FAVORITE!)
Step 5: Using your hands or a spatula, press out excess buttermilk under cold running water until water runs clear. Shape into stick or ball. Butter will keep covered in refrigerator for up to 4 weeks. Serve with bread and enjoy!
Note: While we were making our main batch of butter in the Kitchen-Aid, we also made a very small amount of butter by placing the cream in a small jar and taking turns shaking it. This was a great way to show the kids how much work it is to make butter by hand! Our shaken butter didn’t turn out quite as firm, probably because we didn’t shake it long or hard enough–my 3 and 6 year old didn’t have a lot of stamina, but older kids would probably do a little better!
HOMEMADE BUTTER
Ingredients
- 1 carrot optional
- 1/4 c. milk optional
- 1 quart heavy cream
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- (OPTIONAL) Peel & finely grate a carrot. Heat in small saucepan with 1/4 cup milk until milk is bubbly. Use a clean cheesecloth to strain orange-colored milk into the bowl of your stand mixer. Discard shredded carrot.
- Pour cream into bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Add salt. Cover mixer with a towel–trust me on this one, it will be messy! Turn mixer on high.
- Continue mixing, checking on mixture frequently. It will first turn to whipped cream, then begin to get grainy and separate into butter and buttermilk, and the splashing will get much worse. The butter is ready when it sticks in a clump to the paddle.
Place a colander over a bowl, then strain the buttermilk off of the butter.
Using your hands or a spatula, press out excess buttermilk under cold running water until water runs clear. Shape into stick or ball. Serve with bread and enjoy!
Recipe Notes
Preparation time: 30 minutes. Number of servings (yield): Approximately 1 pound of butter + 2 1/2 cups of buttermilk. Butter will keep covered in refrigerator for up to 4 weeks.
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Ruth Soukup
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I would like to make my own butter but any heavy cream I have ever found has a whole lot of “other” stuff in it other than milk/cream.
When making butter, Do you use regular ultra pasteurized whipping cream or does it have to be just pasteurized ?
Hi Linda,
Using pasteurized Heavy Cream is fine.
Hope this helps!
I’ve been thinking about making homemade butter for a while now. After seeing how easy it was to do with the stand mixer, I just might.
Just as a heads up, though, the buttermilk that comes off of the butter is not like commercial buttermilk you buy from the store. Store bought buttermilk is basically just low fat milk that has had cultures added to it. The result is that it becomes acidic. The acid not only gives it its tangy flavor, but it also makes it react differently in recipes. If you want to use this fresh buttermilk in recipes that call for buttermilk, you’ll need to add a little bit of vinegar to it.
Good advice, because buttermilk has to be a little tangy, it’s what makes it yummy!
When I homeschooled my girls, one year we did the Little House on the Prairie Ciriculum. All I can say is that it was awesome and fun for all of us! We did the butter and many other things. I miss it!
You can get the same result using a handheld mixer, I have accidentally made butter a couple times while making whipped cream.
Good to know! 🙂