We make our own butter (most of the time) due to not always being able to get locally made unsalted butter. However, we can always get local cream. Normally, we do this the very old fashioned way: fill a jar about halfway full of cream, put the lid tightly on it, and shake. About the time you think it’s never going to do anything, it all goes semi-solid and creamy, and then again, when you think it’s not going to do anything, the butter and the buttermilk start separating. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes per jar, depending on who is shaking it, and makes amazing butter. You can leave the cream out at room temperature for 2 to 24 hours to ‘ripen’ the cream, but we never bother. This is supposed to enhance the flavor of the butter, but we haven’t noticed any difference.

Well, at T-Day 2.0, a friend brought homemade butter to go with her bread, and mentioned that she’d used her stand mixer to make it. Then I ran across this article. We don’t have a stand mixer - I’m saving my pennies - but we do have a hand mixer, and it occured to me that they might be used to much the same end.

Well, I managed to get the cream to the semi-solid stage before giving up. It probably would have gone to butter eventually, but I scooped the results up into a jar and finished it up from there. It was a worthy experiment, though, and when we do get a stand mixer, I’ll give it another go. Until then, we’ll be making our butter in a jar.