Healthier Living by Making Butter (Shaking Cream Into Butter)

Healthy living just got a little butter.  Caution: Shaking cream into butter makes people laugh at you.

See the 42 Second Version: "Shaking Butter Like A Boss"

Note: This method takes 5-10 minutes, but Dan Rojas with GreenPowerScience found a way to make the butter in under a minute by using a water bottle.  Check out his video here:  

WARNING: Use safe practices when handling food to avoid contamination, and only use milk or cream from trusted and approved sources. Shaking cream into butter may result in an amazing workout. Use of video content is at own risk.

For this project I decided to try making butter with milk I got straight from the cow.

My wife knows a lady with a cow, so one night we stopped by and picked up a gallon.  After letting it sit in the refrigerator overnight, we could see a faint line showing where the cream had risen to the top, with the milk underneath.

The trick is to skim the cream off the top, and capture it into a container.  I used a wide mouth mason jar.

Note: If you don't have access to a cow, a heavy cream, or whipping cream will work just as well.

All you have to do to make cream into butter, is shake it.

The method that worked well for me was to shake the jar up and down for 2-3 minutes as hard and as quickly as I could.

If you're using whipping cream, then after 3 minutes you shouldn't hear any more sloshing around in the jar.  If you take the lid off to peak inside, you should find that it's turned to a light and fluffy whipped cream.

You could add a little sugar and stop here if you wanted.  But if you want butter, you'll need to continue on.

Reminder: This method takes a little while because the sides of the jar are smooth.  You can see how my friend Dan Rojas found a way to make the butter in under a minute by using a water bottle.

When your cream has turned to whipping cream, feel free to take a 3 minute break. 

This seems to help the whipping cream settle to the bottom a bit, making the next step a lot easier, and a lot quicker.

Shake as hard, and as fast as you can!

You are on the home-streach to getting butter.  The harder and faster you shake, the quicker the cream is going to break.

When you begin to hear liquid sloshing around in the jar again, you're almost done.  Just shake a little bit longer to make sure it's all complete.

This time when you look in the jar, you should see 2 distinct substances.  A ball of something creamy and yellow, and some liquid.

The creamy yellow ball is butter, and is ready to eat!  It should be good for a couple of days, but if you want it to last longer, rinse it in cold water until the water turns clear, and mix in a pinch of salt.  It can last around 2 weeks .

I compared this homemade butter with some of the highest quality butter we got from the store.  Can you see the difference? (The homemade butters are at the top, and right of the last picture.)

The excess liquid is "Traditional Buttermilk".

We tried using this to make whole wheat buttermilk waffles, and they turned out great.

I used some raw organic honey, and a few other ingredients, like vanilla and salt, to make a delicious honey butter.  By the way, this tastes amazing on your fresh buttermilk waffles!

Note: I based the recipe off this video I saw from mahalodotcom - "How to Make Honey Butter"

Well that's my experience with turning fresh cows milk, into butter.  If you're like me, you'll probably eat it the first day :)

There are other neat uses for butter, like making an emergency "Butter Candle".  Make sure you check out that video, if only to gain another idea for survival situations.

That's it for now.  If you liked this project, perhaps you'll like some of my others.

Check them out at www.thekingofrandom.com

If you haven't seen the video yet, it's not too late.  You can still see it below.