An expensive way of doing it on a very small scale (unless you have a lot of cream left over after a party) is to use cream as your base. You can quickly make it by whipping the cream with an electric whisk until it starts to 'break' - buttermilk and butter grains start to develop.
Keep beating & pouring off the buttermilk (you can keep it for baking with). When the butter makes a biggish lump, stop whisking and chill it for a while - it should be around 10degC (ish). You can then 'work' it by patting it (use 2 spatulas if you don't have butter patters) - this gets more buttermilk out.
Add salt to taste, or leave the salt out. Store in fridge but because it's still quite moist, it will not last more than a few days. You'll get a yield of about 50% from double cream (i.e. half the weight of cream you started with).
You can make it with milk, but the yield will be much lower and you'll have to beat it for a lot longer.
I've shown quite a few people how to do it this way - it's good fun. If you've got a child you want to keep quiet for half an hour or so, get a clean jam jar, fill it one third full with cream, and get them to shake it until butter forms. Get them to pour out the buttermilk & proceed as above.
Last edited by HappyMouffe; 03-04-2007 at 09:04 PM.
Reason: added what ot whisk it with
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