Homemade Butter, Sour Cream and Buttermilk

When my friend told me she was making homemade butter, I could only think how hopelessly naive I really am in this provident living stuff. When I tasted her sour cream and butter I was hooked. I needed to know how to do this, especially because I always run out of sour cream long before grocery day and I always have left over cream sitting, waiting, longing to be used before it goes bad. And so because of my inexperience with homemade dairy products, I asked her to be a guest blogger. Thank You Heather. I could not have loved you more than when you brought me a can of freshly made buttermilk. I will be bringing you a strawberry orange muffin in exchange.

Dairy 101 by Heather

If you find a great deal on cream or just want to pamper yourself with really fabulous butter, making butter is easier than you think.

You need:

Heavy whipping cream

3 Tb of olive oil

Sea Salt to taste

Take heavy whipping cream out of the refrigerator and let it warm on the counter for about an hour. Shake well and pour into an automatic mixer with a whip(I use my Bosch), place a cover on and beat on high for approx. 4 minutes. You know you are done with this step when it turns a grainy texture and a thin milky liquid starts splashing up onto your cover.

BUTTERMILK

With a rubber spatula, scrape around the edges of the bowl and scrape out your whip, until the mixture starts to form a ball. Drain and reserve the liquid. The reserved liquid is your buttermilk (its OK if there are still little chunks of butter, that makes it yummy).

BUTTER

Take bowl to the sink and wash the ball in cold water, using the spatula to smash and stir while washing all the butter. Drain any liquid, continue to mash and drain until butter no longer releases liquid (usually only a minute or two), then dump butter into a dry bowl and stir in olive oil and salt to taste. The olive oil will keep it softer and more spreadable. This will yield about 1 1/2 lbs of butter.

Tip: If I am making several batches I line a cake pan with wax paper and spread out the butter , cover and refrigerate. Then in a few hours I can cut it into cubes and wrap them in wax paper, then freeze.

SOUR CREAM

To make sour cream you simply add 1 cup unwhipped cream to 1/4 cup of buttermilk, stir well, cover and let sit out on the counter for 24 hours. Refrigerate at end of 24 hours. It takes up to 48 hours for it to reach its maximum thickness. If you like your sour cream strong, then add more buttermilk.