Homemade Butter
During the lockdown, many people have been inspired to do some home-baking. But why stop there? We asked Suzi from Moonrise home bakes to write a regular series of easy to make home recipes with common ingredients that are readily available. She’s given us a great homemade butter recipe using nothing but double cream, salt and water.
Making butter at home is much easier than you might think. You will only need to use two ingredients: double cream and salt. It is cheaper than the shop-bought version and it tastes fantastic. This recipe makes approximately 300g of butter.
Ingredients:
600ml double cream
Quarter tea spoon of sea salt (optional)
Method:
- Leave the double cream out of the fridge for a few hours bringing it to room temperature.
- Pour the double cream into a bowl and whisk it with an electric whisk or a mixer until it splits completely. At this point, you will have the solids separating from the liquid. The liquid part is called buttermilk and you can use it in many recipes such as my Quick and Easy Soda Bread, cakes and muffins.
3. Strain the mixture making sure you save the buttermilk for use in other recipes. It is best to keep this refrigerated and use within 2 weeks. You can freeze Buttermilk. although this can change the consistency.
4. Remove the solids from the sieve and press them into a ball, squeezing out as much of the buttermilk as you can. You have two choices here, either run cold water over the buttermilk until it runs clear. Or my preferred method of submerging in the bowl.
5. Fill up a bowl with ice-cold water and place the lump of butter in the bowl. Continue to squeeze out the buttermilk inside the bowl, keeping the butter under the water.
6. Take the butter out of the bowl and add salt if using it. Salt also helps preserve the butter for longer so I recommend you use at least a bit of salt.
7. Put the butter into the bowl of ice-cold water once more and squeeze it a bit to ensure you mix the salt evenly.
8. Take the butter out of the bowl and store it in a container. Your delicious homemade butter is now ready to eat.
Tip: Once your butter is ready, you can add herbs or garlic to it and use it in cooking or to make garlic bread. You can also spread it on our delicious homemade soda bread.
