I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. We’ve made butter often enough in our DLX, but I’ve been wanting to try making it with Snowville Creamery’s heavy whipping cream (*not* ultra-pasteurized) since it became available at Whole Foods. The other — also important — reason for making butter is that I’m in love with Kerrygold’s Cultured Irish Butter…. and don’t mind paying a higher price at Costco for their 24-oz box… BUT I also would prefer to buy local when at all possible to support the farmers around us. The savings in cost, it turns out, isn’t anything to sneeze at either.
Two cups of the half-gallon of heavy whipping cream went with the strawberry shortcake I mentioned in an earlier post, so I had 6 cups left to work with. I added 1/3 + 1/6 cup of Seven Stars Farm Yogurt (my favorite store bought variety when I’m not making my own) and left it for about 13 hours in a bowl (whisked first of course!), covered with plastic wrap, at room temperature. After the overnight stay outside, I put it in the fridge to chill for a few hours. I’d have preferred to culture it a bit longer, but decided to make the butter in between lunch and dinner, since I figured by the time I got dinner started I’d be too tired to make it, and will have to put it off ’til tomorrow, which does me no good since I’m making our favorite loaf tomorrow, and it will not do to not have that butter ready!
So anyway, into the DLX mixer it went. And yes, some people don’t like making butter with anything plastic but my DLX has served me well all these years and has made me so much butter that it just tends to laugh off the criticism. What’s great about making butter in the DLX is that I can just plop a piece of plastic wrap over the top of the machine and I can observe what’s going on without getting all splattered. It’s almost like having an old fashioned glass butter churn, except this is for lazy people like me.
Just whirrrrr, whirrrrrr, whirrrrr….. it will thicken and turn into butter rather quickly. You’ll know because liquid (the buttermilk) will start splattering the plastic wrap. Let this go on for a bit, say, a minute, to get all that good buttermilk out (yum… for pancakes, dressing, any other recipe you like that calls for buttermilk!). Pour out the buttermilk (I used a plastic sieve but didn’t really need it much since the butter stayed put in the mixer bowl. Added (filtered) water, whirred again on high so that the butter leaves the beaters and gets slapped back to the sides of the bowl before coming together in the center again. Pour out the water and discard. Do this several times until the water runs clear. This is another reason I love the DLX! The washing part is a breeze!
The hardest part was squeezing out all that water at the end. I’m still not done. I’ve wrapped mine in plastic, parchment, foil, freezer paper, etc. Parchment is best but I’m out, so right now I’ve got it in a log-shape (kinda like those Amish butter logs) in paper towel and foil.
All in all, great results. I got about 2 1/2 cups of buttermilk, and 28 oz of cultured butter. (Not bad at all. I think the Kerrygold is $8(?) at Costco (sorry I forget the price)… the half-gallon of cream was $7.99, and I only used 3/4 of it. I love European butter, but I love my local farmers more.
That foamy stuff? Buttermilk!
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