Butter!

Tonight's project was to change my gear cable.   Tonight's project failed.   Couldn't get the screw undone.   So I thought I'd tell you about a project I did quite a while ago, but have repeated a couple of times since.   Home made butter!   This seemed to be a fairly unusual project.   Most people I know don't seem to have a clue how to make butter, and very few have tried it.   So I was quite surprised at how easy it was and how well it turned out.   All you need is cream and an electric whisk.

 I used 600ml of double cream, and just started whisking.   It whipped up pretty quickly.   I then carried on whisking for a quite a long time.   My cream started getting grainier and grainier and harder to whisk.   It turned into quite a messy project!   I got butter splats all in my hair and up the walls (the second time I did this I put the mixing bowl into a box first).   What fun!   Suddenly liquid started to appear in the bottom of the my mixing bowl.   Buttermilk!   I put the butter into a sieve and let the buttermilk drain off.   I filled the mixing bowl with cold water and kneaded the butter in the cold water to remove as much buttermilk as I could and to stick all the individual grains together.   Finally I kneaded half a tea spoon of salt into the butter to preserve it, and then shaped it, using a butter dish as a mould.   The home made butter was delicious!   So fresh and creamy.   Much nicer than any shop bought butter.   It kept pretty well too!   It was quite streaky though.   Clearly my whisk is not as good at removing buttermilk than industrial machines.   Ah well.   A future project will have to be to use home made butter in baking!