Deep in my memory bank, I house a poem from my youth—a tongue-twister, actually—a tongue-twister about butter. Although the name of the book escapes me, the poem was about a girl recognizing the importance of good butter. How can something made solely of cream—and sometimes salt—add such depth of flavor to so many things both sweet and savory alike? It’s pretty amazing: I can see why a poem might be composed applauding its awesomeness. Even margarine—butter’s non-dairy competitor—is barely called margarine anymore: it’s called buttery spread or buttery sticks. Because even if you can’t eat the real deal, you want your substitute to taste just like it. And what’s even better than real butter? Homemade butter!
Years ago, I was gifted a replica of an antique, hand-crank butter churn. It had been gathering dust…until today. As we are in the middle of the COVID pandemic and butter has been scarce—it is apparently being hoarded along with all of the toilet paper—I seized the opportunity to try my hand at homemade since heavy cream always seems to be well-stocked.
Sure, you can also make homemade butter in a stand mixer and save yourself the workout—cheater—OR you can use a little elbow grease and churn it by hand. Desperate for something to keep my tween engaged during these long, quarantined days of summer, I put him to work to help me perform magic before our very eyes. In a matter of seven minutes, plain heavy cream is first aerated to whipped cream and then continues on its transformation journey to the final products of solid butter and buttermilk; I was tricked into thinking that this process would be daunting. After a brief pressing to extrapolate the leaching buttermilk from the butter solids, the butter is ready to be used or refrigerated for later.
NOTE: 10 ounces of heavy cream yields approximately 4 ounces of butter, or 1 stick (8 TBSP). Double that amount if using stand mixer.
Being quarantined has been an eye-opening and empowering experience from the get-go. In addition to the recurring theme of resourcefulness, I have learned that I don’t need to be reliant on the grocery store’s fluctuating inventory, I can prepare several staples from scratch: bread, pickles, sweet potato butter, preserves, applesauce and now…butter. I’ll keep you posted on what’s next!
Oh, and in case you were curious about the aforementioned tongue-twister, allow me to regale you:
Betty Botter bought some butter;
But she said, “This butter’s bitter,”
“If I put it in my batter,
It will make my batter bitter”.
So she bought a bit of butter,
Better than her bitter butter.
And she put it in her batter,
And her batter was not bitter!
So, ‘twas better…
Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.
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