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Summer Projects
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This is a project my kids love to do, even though we have an ice cream machine. Click the link for recipe & instructions! Total prep time is probably about 20-30 minutes in all, but it takes about a day to make.
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Nothing says summer in our house like home-churned butter! We love fresh butter all year long, but there's just something magical about the beautiful golden color you get when the cows have been eating the bright green grasses of summer that just can't be beat with commercial dyes! After their first summer of being mommy's little helpers my kids are excellent butter makers! They even giggled watching Uncle Steve attempt to produce similiar results and end up with nothing more than a white paste and some chunky buttermilk. The secret the girls know? Don't stop shaking! Fill a mason jar 1/3 or 1/2 way full, cap, and shake shake shake!! Our summer butter is kid-powered, and it's a favored chore around our house because they like to sit down and watch cartoons while they shake. Very few chores offer that! ;) A few tips from our years making butter through trial and error - first the cream will whip and become difficult to shake, just keep shaking it. Next, it will suddenly break down into a liquid again and get sloshy with buttery chunks. You're not done, keep shaking. Finally, you will end up with a semi-transparent whitish fluid (buttermilk) and butter. Drain off the buttermilk and save for biscuits , pancakes, or waffles. Take your butter by the hands, or use a bowl and spoon if you're squeemish, and squeeze the rest of the buttermilk out. Pour a bit of cold water in and work it through to "clean" the butter, then salt as desired. Also, salt helps preserve it longer int he fridge. Keep in mind this is nothing more than globbed cream fat. Also, in order to get golden butter (as opposed to white butter) you will need grass fed cows. We use Horizon Organic Cream, and we buy it by the 1/2 gallon at Costco usually for about $9. You can purchase smaller quantities at your local grocer if you would like to try it as an experiment only, but I caution you...you just might get hooked on home-made butter!
1 last tip - to make whipped cream instead of butter simply add a bit of vanilla and powdered sugar, then shake to the "whipped" stage! ;)
