Butter making success!!!

Wooo! Second time is the charm apparently!

So I first tried basic make at home butter making with an electric mixer about 2 weeks ago or so, right after I came back to school, well that turned out ok, but I didn't mix it enough at all, it was a pain, a mess and made lots of dirty dishes :P. I used an 8oz container of Organic Valley whipping cream. It was still good for sure but not quite what I expected or what I really wanted.

Tonight that all changed! I used much more (1oz) of heavy whipping cream from Evans Farmhouse over in Norwich NY (near Binghamton). Their milk and yogurt is wonderful, its non-homogenized and low temp pasteurized, so all the goodness is inside! (NYT article on them and other artisan milk and butter makers)

Starting from this base, I used a large frozen bowl and started the electric mixer going. It took way longer then I expected and I think if I had let it sit more and warm up to room temp or let it sour just a tad that it would have gone faster, it took about an hour with the hand held electric mixer, such that I thought I had somehow done something wrong!

However the trick is to keep tasting it as you go, and I could taste and feel the itty bitty fat globules as I went along so I knew it was working right, suddenly it sloshed up with the butter sticking to the sides and buttermilk sloshing in the bottom!

Success!

With 1/2 of it wrapped and in the freezer and the other 1/2 out to be used (its wonderful on my cinnamon bread I made yesterday) I declare complete success. I also have almost exactly 8oz of buttermilk meaning I was able to recover almost all of it and washing didn't turn up too much.

A picture will be forthcoming

in the meantime, this is the site I used to help me along the way, and I found it very useful for background as well as pictures during the process.