Home made butter is awesome!!
So is home made bread!!

I agree. Homemade butter is awesome.

Bobby I'm happy to see that you are making bread. There isn't much better than homemade bread. Just remember though that a quick rise isn't always the best. A slow rise will develop more flavour.

Ann, I remember reading that a long slow rise is better (that's why the overnight refrigerator rises are best), therefore I probably won't do this every time. But, when I'm in a hurry it's nice to have an alternative method (of course I could just buy rapid rise yeast). Quite often, I get too slow a rise because I forget about it and it becomes beer bread. Then it goes straight in the trash and I go buy a loaf of Wonderbread until I'm brave enough to try again!

Only in second grade. :) Maybe I should try it that way again. All that shaking might tone my arms. LOL!

Isn't it weird, though, that butter is cheaper than cream?

Bobby in 2005 I posted a series of photos of how my daughter's MIL made butter one day after her DH came home with a load of soon-to-expire cream.
Sorry these are all clicky pics. When I get time one day I'll update them into a slideshow.

Here are the photos and comments:

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MAKING BUTTER

You don't need a cow or a butter churn, but you can make butter very easily within a few minutes if you have some good quality fresh whipping cream.
So we saw demonstrated yesterday at the summer home of my son-in-law's parents.
His mother Joy grew up on an Alberta farm where, as well as caring for horses, she milked cows in the mornings and churned butter. Yesterday was a modernized version of what she used to do, as they had recently come into a bonanza of fresh cream greatly reduced in price from a warehouse sale as the cream was nearing its expiry date. Here's what Joy did with two pints (about a liter) of whipping cream, a wooden spoon and an old electric mixer:

Joy added a bit of salt and kneaded it in at the end but this is optional for those who prefer a bit of salt in their butter (we do.)
We ate this for dinner spread lavishly on our potatoes ! Yum. The buttermilk will go into pancakes this weekend.
I will try this when we get home to Tenerife as we don't get fresh buttermilk there and Wolf loves it. And the butter certainly tasted better than what we buy.
That was interesting. Something fun to do with small children too !
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SharonCb

Up the ante and make cultured butter, instead of sweet butter. A stand mixer (great how-to SharonCb) is one of the easiest methods I've ever used, but I've also used a Daisy Churn, an old-fashioned dash churn, and a regular hand-held electric mixer.

-Grainlady

I think cream is a byproduct of Mozzerella...and for butter it doesn't have to be as fresh as for cream.
A quart of whipping cream is an investment in deliciousness!
What I want to know is how do they make that French and Irish high fat butter?
Linda c

My kids make the butter every Thanksgiving...and they love to show it off at dinner to all the relatives!

Home made butter was the only kind I'd ever had, until I reached my teens.

But we had to milk the cows, then wait for it to seperate before we could make the butter.

Eventually we got a seperator, and that sped the process up some.

Rusty

When I was little, we had cows, and one of my jobs was to make butter with an antique churn. We used raw milk, and I hated it, but that's because my father wasn't careful about what he let the cows eat. His mother had invented a churn (and patented it) that would fit inside an electric washing machine (which wasn't all that common when she invented it), but we didn't use that for some reason. When I was a bit older, my father would make me milk the cows, but I usually spilled the milk on my way back to the house from the barn, and so he stopped making me do that. I hated going to the barn, and I would not wear the same clothes in the house that I had worn in the barn - and also not the same shoes. I would also take a bath after a visit to the barn, and this meant that it was a very time consuming process for me to go through before going to school. I wouldn't eat the butter we made, but my father would drink the buttermilk, which I also hated.

Lars

Like Rusty, I grew up on homemade butter. We refrigerated the raw milk, let the cream rise to the top and then poured it off to make butter.

At the cheese class I attended recently, the instructor made butter in a blender and gave me some of the buttermilk. Elery loves the commercial buttermilk, which I can't drink, I only use in baking. he didn't like the REAL buttermilk, though.

Annie

Does by accident because you were whipping cream in the stand mixer and got distracted count? My DS and DH have done that.

Yep, grew up on it. We bought whole milk from a friend with a cow. Skimmed the cream off the top (about a third of the gallon jar), and made butter in an old-fashioned churn. I hated that job!
Then mom 'discovered' it could be done in the ol' stand mixer. Much better! Even better once we figured out if you hang a dish towel over the mixer, you don't end up with butter/cream all over the kitchen! LOL
I still don't like buttermilk to drink, but love it in baked goods. LOVE homemade butter, but don't make it............'cuz I'd EAT it!

Deanna