Welcome to our Wyoming blog. On this blog I have been sharing how we came to move here and the 'adventure' we have been on every since. We started with a hillside, and today (6 years later) are finally putting in some landscaping. We are by no means done. I hope you will come along on our adventure.

I also have 2 other blogs. Big Horn Mountain Creations show cases my quilting and other artistic adventures. Decorating my Tin Shack, is about creating a home thru decorating. Both are on the side bar, I hope you will stop by.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Making Butter

Fresh raw milk, WAHOOOOO. Finally a source for raw milk, I have been looking for 2 years now. Now I can make butter, yogurt and ice cream with this beautiful, live milk. It is so full of flavor and wonderful healthful things, I can hardly get enough. So my first venture is making butter, which I have not done before. After some research, I found I could make it with my Kitchen Aid mixer. Some use their blenders, still others just use a jar.

Each picture has the time on it, you will find it took a little over 30 minutes. The pictures are of my second batch, having never done this before I was more interested in the process then taking pictures with the first go round. So here we go.

I am making this with cream, you can also make the butter with milk but I had nice raw cream so figured it would be perfect....next time I will make ice cream (need a ice cream freezer).

With the whisk on the mixer, I put 1 1/2 cups of cream (or there abouts) in and started it on med-low (didn't want cream all over the kitchen).















After about a minute, I turned it up to med-high and as you can see it is getting thicker and......















thicker, yep, whipped cream. Now on to high. The volume has doubled now and it is getting really thick. I stopped it about every 30 sec to minute to scrap down the sides. This is going at high speed (the camera did good at catching the picture even at this speed).















Another scrapping and you can see how it is clinging to the whisk.














More mixing, then the volume started to fall.






























and change color, this cream color cream is now turning yellow (looks peach here), it is starting to separate which is just what we want. We are waiting for the buttermilk to separate from the butter. This took a few minutes.















Look there, buttermilk and butter.......cool. Now I can separate them. Just reach the hand in














and grab the butter chunks and squeeze the butter milk out, and the butter clings nicely together.














after getting most of the butter out, I then strained the buttermilk into a glass, this is the result of two batches and I will make buttermilk biscuits with it since we are not to fond of just drinking it.






























Taking all the butter, now you squeeze out the buttermilk, rinse in water and squeeze some more, getting all the buttermilk out, which will give it longer shelf life.
Next add some salt, mix in and then taste, if good form into logs or put into a mold.














As you can see I got 2 nice logs, weighting in at 3/4 lb. I am ticked pink. Lovely fresh raw milk and lovely fresh raw butter.

6 comments:

Susan said...

Gosh, that's interesting, Gail. I've only made butter in a blender, from whipping cream, and never got the buttermilk. I would have used it in biscuits, too, but my mother just loved it with big chunks of cornbread in it!

So where are you getting the milk? Are you going to get some butter molds now?

Rachel said...

How exciting!! I am so jealous. I have been trying to talk my hubby into getting raw milk for quite awhile. I love making butter!

Sarah said...

Gail, I've also just moved to the Bighorns and I'm having a hard time finding raw milk, can you tell me where you get yours? I would love to start making my own butter!

Gail said...

Sarah, I have left a comment for you over at your blog, contact me privately.

Kate/High Altitude Gardening said...

Oh, I would love to make butter. Any tips on where/how I find a resource for raw milk?

Ellen said...

The Weston Price Foundation has a list of suppliers of raw milk here:
http://www.realmilk.com/where5.html