It's time to make easy homemade butter y'all!
I totally think butter should be it's own food group.
It's so easy to make homemade butter that the first time I did it, it was an accident. I was actually trying to whip some cream for a dessert topping. A little too much whipping, and my cream turned into butter. It was awesome!
So now I make homemade butter on purpose. I like to make homemade butter for myself and to give as gifts.
How Do You Make Homemade Butter?
Here's what you need to make homemade butter:
That's right- just cream and a food processor or a blender.
Pour the cream into your food processor, then turn it on. In less than 5 minutes, you'll have butter.
Place a medium meshed sieve over a bowl to strain the butter. You want to press as much liquid out of the butter as you can. Make sure you reserve all that wonderful buttermilk for something else. I made buttermilk pancakes 🙂
Place the butter back into your food processor with a tablespoon of ice water. Pulse for a few seconds, and you'll end up with a super creamy butter. Transfer your butter to a container or wrap in plastic wrap or parchment paper. I like to wrap mine in parchment in half cup rolls.
Now, you could stop there and enjoy your butter as is, or take it one step further. I like to make compound butter while I'm at it. Before I remove my butter from the food processor, I'll add other ingredients. This time I decided to make a cinnamon sugar butter and a dill butter.
For the cinnamon sugar butter, I added 1 tablespoon of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon to half a cup of butter.
For the dill butter, I added 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh dill and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to half a cup of butter. This is crazy good on salmon.
By the way, did you know you can get parchment paper and baker's twine at Dollar Tree? It kills me how much I love that place.
And, I'm lucky enough to have a store right near me that frequently puts pints of cream on sale 3 for $.99. Since butter lasts so much longer than cream, I'll go buy a whole bunch and make as much butter as I can - I like to make a lot of cookies 🙂
Can you believe making butter is that easy? For the majority of the time I was making my last batch of butter, I was holding my 2 month old with one hand while pulsing with the other. But of course you learn to do everything one handed with a newborn, right?
Next time, I'm going to try to get more creative with my compound butter - I'm thinking lavender. What would you put in your compound butter?
Hi, I’m Jordan – a work at home mom with 3 super fun little boys. I love entertaining guests and want to help you make entertaining easy!
36 comments on “Homemade Butter”
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Thank you for sharing this! It's definitely a keeper. I like your ideas for compound butter (especially the cinnamon.) This would be good too making garlic butter with fresh minced (or finely chopped) garlic and Italian seasoning to put on garlic bread or buttered noodles.
I've been planning on doing this. Looks so easy!
Now I know what I want for dinner tonight!
It is easy and delicious 🙂
This is a great recipe! I’d love it if you would share it on my new corn-free link party. http://www.creatingsilverlinings.com/corn-free-everyday-feb-01-2015/
Thanks Jillian, I'll head over there 🙂
I never knew that making butter could be so easy.
So this may be a stupid question, but growing up everything was "butter" margarine and the like, it was all "butter" lol. So my question is…is this real butter or margarine? Question #2 how much salt would you add to make this salted butter?
I am thinking add some honey, and have honey butter…now I NEED a new food processor 🙂
Don't worry, that's not a stupid question! But this is as "butter" as butter gets – no margarine in sight, LOL. For me the perfect amount of salt is 1 teaspoon per cup of butter. And I will definitely have to add some honey next time I make a batch 🙂
What is the yield?
what i mean is, If I use 2 cups of cream how much butter will I get?
I did this with one cup of heavy cream today and got about 1/2 cup of butter and 1/2 cup buttermilk 👍🏻
I wonder if honey would work in it. I love honey butter.
Thank you for sharing! I just made 2 cups of heavy cream and I got a beautiful homemade butter and 1 cup of buttermilk that I will use tomorrow mornings for pancakes.
on average…what is the shelf life of this butter made this way?
I'm actually not sure – we use it up so quickly. I've had mine in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks and it was still perfectly good. Hope that helps!
Love your recipe, but do I use cream or heavy cream?
Heavy or whipping cream – they’re the same thing just different name depending on where you live. Make sure it’s whipping cream NOT whipped cream, the whipping cream is heavy cream, a liquid; whereas whipped cream has already been whipped with sugar and/or vanilla to make it a topping. You could make this with other creams or milk but it will take a lot longer to get butter and won’t be as creamy.
I had no idea those were the same thing!! Thanks for the education and the awesome tutorial. I’m making butter first thing tomorrow!
Oh my! Me, too! Can a blender do the same job? Thanks! Can't wait to try it!
Can't you freeze butter to use later?
Rena, yes you can freeze butter!
If you were going to make salted butter, how much would you add?
Do you use canned milk, or heavy cream?
Why is your butter yellow? I just made this today and it’s delicious but my butter is white as snow! I added a dash of Himalayan pink salt. Also, my food processor took closer to 10 minutes to get that butter consistency, I also squeezed it through a cheesecloth to get as much of the liquid out as possible.
Are u talking of store bought cream??
Can I use fresh cream which floats on milk after boiling instead??
I am referring to store bought cream. But fresh cream sounds even more delicious 🙂 I don’t have experience with that though
Yes, you certainly can use fresh cream after milking your cow. Just strain your cows MILK using cheese cloth or teatowel cloth or a unused diaper cloth to stain your fresh milk. Then let your milk sit for about 20-30 minutes to allow heavy cream to settle at the top or your milk.
Now scoop heavy cream off top of milk. There you have fresh heavy cream to make fresh butter.
My mommy would make our butter from the cows MILK.
Molly was the best milking cow we had.
There were 7 of us with plenty mouths to feed.
Baked bread, ice cream, butter,much more.
Enjoy
Rachel Cargill
COUNTRYWITHCLASS,
Event Planner/Entertainer.
Somerset, CA 95684
530-220-0095
Can i use half and half to do this? I have a 1/2 gallon of expired unopened half and half. Would love to be able to use it instead of throw it.
Do you use ionized or plain salt?
Sorry…iodized…
I don’t think it really matters. I’ve used iodized salt and also sea salt before 🙂
Thanks Jordan, I enjoyed reading this! Been meaning to do this for a while and today, as they say, is the day. I finished curing my own ham last week so will make some bread followed by the butter, and will serve with the piccalilli I made last month. Can’t wait. I’m in the UK and to be fair we don’t really get the deals you guys tend to, but this goes beyond saving money, it’s just the simple pleasure of knowing you made something yourself and knowing you’ve shown your kids a different way than just arbitrarily buying it from the shops 😀
In terms of what to add to the butter, based on where I live, it’s a no brainer. Wild Garlic will be starting to shoot any time now, and I always make pestos & butters out of it (as well as eat it raw and cooked). Like you, I roll it into a cylinder shape, cover it in clingfilm and then freeze it. Any time i need some over the next few months,i take it out and either cut a small disk to fry something or take loads for garlic bread and such like. Thanks again, and have a great day.
Can you can the better afterwards? It would require melting it down and doing water bath method??
*butter
If we wanted to add butter, how much would we use?
I made this today and it was so easy. Thank you for sharing:)