Home made butter

Just after Christmas a friend who knows my propensity for trying out new ideas told me to watch out for the supermarkets selling off all the overstocked fresh cream, as you can make butter at home with it apparently. She didn't know how, but said it just involved your food mixer. So of course I had to try it out.

I bought 3 pints of cream for something like 35p a pint and had a go, it was interesting and very messy, but the end result sure enough, was butter.

After this weekends cake stall, I was left with a load of whipped cream and half a tub of clotted cream so I've just done a batch. Just added salt crystals.

This is stage one, after the initial mixing, it turns in to butter all of a sudden, you can hear the change in your machine as it has this large lump going round in it instead of the cream and lots of sloppy buttermilk, which goes everywhere. I've tried wrapping the while machine in cling film, but it still just slops everywhere, so I've given up now and just give the whole machine a good wash down afterwards.

And here is the end result. It doesn't keep quite as well as shop bought butter, especially as the weather gets warmer, so I'll make it into smaller pats, wrap in cling film and then freeze, and we can take it out as we need it.