This is something that I have wanted to do with Nikki for a while. A simple, easy (and tasty!) experiment that anyone can do at home.
First, we checked that Nikki had strong enough muscles, because making butter is hard work…
Nikki poured some double cream into a jar and I secured the lid – with a couple of rounds of sellotape, just to make sure it wouldn’t fly off! Then we shook it, and shook it and shook it some more:
While shaking, we discussed where milk and cream come from and then watched an episode of Fixiki about whipping cream into butter. Unfortunately, it is only available in Russian language.
We took note of how the cream changed as we shook it. Eventually, we heard a wet thunk – we had butter!
After a few minutes’ vigorous shaking we got solid, ‘whipped’ cream inside the jar.
The cream separated into butter and buttermilk.
Eventually the cream turned to butter with a rather wet splosh.
We drained the buttermilk out as best as best as we could, stirred in a little salt and put it in the fridge to cool. We made some savoury scones using the buttermilk and they were perfect to test the butter on. The butter has a very creamy taste, though adding salt reduces the cream flavour quite a lot.
