Butter Making 101

I got some great news this week. Rose, my friend Kim's cow, had her calf recently! That means fresh milk again. Yay!

Last year we started buying fresh milk from Kim. It's the best stuff. And we got totally spoiled. I learned to make butter. I had buttermilk out the wazoo for baking all sorts of wonderful things. And we ate WAY too much ice cream! Not to mention that the milk itself just tastes great.

I even learned to milk that cow! It's way harder than it looks, and I wasn't great at it. Poor Rose. She was very patient with me. But she was probably pretty happy because she got to eat LOTS of grain that day, since it took me forever....

So this week, we started getting the milk from Kim again. I thought I'd show you how I make the butter. It's super simple and definitely not the way our grandmothers did it. I do it in the blender and it takes just a few minutes.

We get the milk in gallon size glass jars.


I scoop the cream off the top of the milk and put it in the blender.


I always have lots of help.


More help than a mother deserves....

The blender starts making a funny sound and we know the butter is ready. It rises to the top of the blender.


I scoop it out and put it in a little bowl.


I wash the butter under cold running water for a couple minutes to get any remaining milk out, then add sea salt and put it in my sweet little butter keeper.

Rose's butter is fantastic on hot, fresh bread! And it is naturally that beautiful yellow color.

Come back tomorrow and we'll grind wheat to make bread.

Till then,
Laura Lee