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When milk gets warm, it
spoils. Today, we can keep milk fresh at the grocery store and in our homes
by cooling it in refrigerators. Before refrigerators were invented, however,
people would turn cream skimmed from the top of milk into products such as
butter and cheese. These products did not have to be kept as cold or used up
as quickly as milk did, and they could be transported safely over long
distances to other places to be sold. Over the years, people have used
many different methods to churn cream into butter. |
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Sometimes, butter makers plunged a paddle into a tub full of
cream. Other times, butter makers turned a hand crank on the side of a
barrel of cream to whirl the barrel around and around, end over end.
Modern creameries use machines such as huge stainless steel tubes that can
hold up to 1500 pounds of cream at a time and churn as much as a ton of
butter in an hour.
Here’s a method you can use at home to make butter with only a glass jar
or a mixer…
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What you need:
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1 pint of heavy whipping cream
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a large glass jar with a lid OR a hand or
electric mixer and a mixing bowl
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a large bowl
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a spatula
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cold water
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2 ramekins
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Optional: a pinch of salt, a tray of
candy molds, butter molds and/or wooden stamps
What you do:
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Bring the heavy whipping cream to room
temperature by leaving it out of the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
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If you are using a jar, pour the cream into
the jar, screw on the lid, and begin shaking the jar. If you are using a
mixer, pour the cream into the mixing bowl and begin beating.
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After a couple of minutes of shaking or
beating, the heavy whipping cream will turn into lighter whipped cream.
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After a couple more minutes, the lightly
whipped cream will turn into a thicker whipped cream.
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Soon this thicker whipped cream will
separate into solid butterfat and liquid whey.
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Eventually, you will have a lump of yellow
butter and some liquid buttermilk. Pour the buttermilk out bit by bit and
keep shaking or beating the cream until no more buttermilk is forming and
all the buttermilk has been poured out. (You can collect the buttermilk in
another jar and cool it in the refrigerator. Then you can drink it or bake
with it later!)
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Dump the lump of butter into the large bowl.
Pour cold water over the butter and squeeze the butter against the side of
the bowl with the spatula to press out any last bits of buttermilk. Pour
the buttermilk/water out and rinse the butter with more water. Repeat
until only clean butter remains.
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You can mix a pinch of salt into your butter
to preserve it and make it taste a little less sweet.
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Put the butter into ramekins or, if you want
to mold it into fun shapes, a tray for molding candy. You can even
purchase molds made especially for shaping butter.
Butter Molds
 Be sure to chill the butter in the refrigerator for
several minutes before popping it out of the molds.
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Often people and creameries will stamp their
finished butter with a wooden stamp carved with a mark that stands for
them, such as their initials or a special design. You can purchase stamps,
baking stamps, or carve your own letters and pictures into your finished butter. Again,
chill the butter before trying to stamp any impressions on it.
What you can talk about:
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Milk is a mixture of water and tiny bits of
fat. Fat is lighter than water, so fat floats to the top of a container of
milk. There it can be skimmed off and collected as cream. Like regular
milk, cream is also made up of water and tiny bits of fat, but the ratio
of fat to water is much higher in cream than it is in milk. Discuss with
your child ways people use and eat cream, such as whipped cream, cream in
coffee, sour cream, cream sauces, and ice cream.
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The tiny bits of fat in cream or milk are
like small balloons full of butter. When you let cream warm to room
temperature, hard crystals form inside the balloons of fat. Once you shake
or mix the cream, the crystals cut and burst the “skins” of the balloons
of fat and let the fat out. The fat then clumps together, eventually
forming large lumps of butter. In addition, the warmth lets special
bacteria grow. These bacteria produce acids that keep other, bad bacteria
from growing. They also give butter a good flavor.
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