Oh Crap! – Musings of an Unperfect Mommy

Making Butter and Banana Bread

June 8, 2011

First of all – today is Matt’s 25th birthday and rest assured there will be blackmail fodder later – bwahahahaha! Now on with today’s story :-).

I took out the Homestead Blessings Dairy Delights DVD from the library and watched the segment on making butter from scratch. I remembered how I did that in my kindergarten class eons ago, and remembered how I’d always wanted to do it with my kids, but never got around to it. So, enough with the excuses already – it was time to make butter!! So, I bought a quart of (really expensive) heavy whipping cream and borrowed two canning jars from my mom and we were ready. Yes, that’s right – it’s that simple. Did I take pictures? Well, of course I did – and here’s part of the process:

First we put two cups of cream into each jar, screwed the lids on tight, and the kids shook those things for all they were worth.

It takes awhile for the cream to change from liquid to whipped cream to butter so the kids and I kept shaking. At one point we thought it was done, but it still was heavily whipped cream, so we put it back in the jar and shook some more. Finally, Maggie hollered that the butter was forming into a ball and there was liquid coming out and indeed the butter was made!

We then separated the butter from the buttermilk ( buttermilk is the liquid that comes off the butter as it is made) and then squished as much of the buttermilk out of the butter as we could. It took a few minutes, but we knew when it was done.

After all the hard work, we tried out the butter on some saltines – just like when I was in kindergarten. That butter tastes so good! I didn’t salt it because really I prefer the unsalted kind, but you could if you want to.

Then it was time to fill a container with our fresh, homemade, sweet cream butter and put it in the fridge. It was such a feeling of satisfaction!

After we got cleaned up from that mess, it was time to make the banana bread. It was a really easy recipe, but as you can see from the picture, I forgot one tiny detail – I neglected to see that the bigger pans only make 2 loaves, not 4. Oh crap. I think they’ll be yummy anyway and we can put homemade butter on the slices!

It has been a very full day, but it’s also been very enjoyable and memorable for both me and the kiddos. I would encourage you if you’ve never made butter before to give it a go – it’s totally worth it!

2 comments
Comments

On June 9, 2011 at 12:12 AM, dxprog said:

Damn well better be some of that banana bread when I get home!

On June 9, 2011 at 8:44 AM, java_queen said:

Don't worry - I put two loaves in the freezer. We did eat the other two though :-).

Leave a Comment

Click here to cancel reply.

Name *

E-mail Address *
(will not be published)

Website

Comment

Δ