better butter...

we had a little bit of fun this morning making our own butter. it didn't take long--we had bread baking in the oven so it was a fitting way to pass the time. and worth it, too, in the end. this stuff was good!

i thought there'd be some involved, labor-intensive process to it all, but as it turns out, butter is made quite easily. here's how:

start with a bit of ripened cream (we left ours sitting out for about 15 hours--don't go longer than 24) and a mason jar with a tight-fitting lid. our jar had a handle, which made shaking super simple.

ready, set, shake! it took just under 3 minutes for our cream to go from liquid...
to solid. there will be some liquid left around the great big glob of butter. that's the buttermilk. pour it off and save it for making pancakes, biscuits, etc. i had some in my morning coffee, it was quite good.

now, line a strainer with a thin piece of cloth, and rinse the blob of butter. you want to get any remaining buttermilk off, as it will sour the butter. pat your butter dry, transfer to a bowl, and mash it with a wooden spoon until it loses its graininess and comes together in a smooth ball. this is the time to add salt if you desire. a couple pinches should to the trick. salt helps to guard against spoiling.

transfer to a mold of some sort. alternatively, you could leave the butter in a ball. i thought little pats of butter would be cute, so we used this vintage madeline pan. learn from my mistake--even when chilled, the butter was a bit difficult to remove from such a stiff pan.
still, we got a few that were photoshoot material.

and what's more important, it tasted divine on our morning bread with frog hollow apricot conserve. yum. is it morning again, yet?