Home-made Butter

One of my favorite things about going out to eat is the fresh butter that many restaurants serve with their bread. Try as it might, there's just no way that store bought butter compares. Making butter at home is very simple if you have a KitchenAid Mixer. Below, I've listed out the steps:


1. Pour room temperature (if it's cold, it will take a lot longer) heavy whipping cream into your KitchenAid mixer bowl.

2. Using the cake batter paddle (do not use the wisk unless you want whipped cream instead), beat on the highest setting you can use without splashing everywhere. You should use the splash guard for this.

3. After about 10 minutes (you can increase the speed as it gets thicker) the cream will begin to thicken, then whip, then firm up and turn yellow.

4. Make sure once the cream has firmed up and looks like butter that you do not stop the mixer. After a few seconds of being firm, the butter will begin to release a liquid (buttermilk).

5. After the buttermilk has been released, drain the buttermilk from the rest of the butter. You can save this buttermilk and make biscuits or yogurt from it if you are adventurous!

6. Next, add salt to the mixture. The amount of salt is totally up to you (a little salt goes a long way). I prefer my fresh butter to be lightly salted since fresh butter is pretty tasty on its own. It's at this stage that you can also whip in chives or other flavorings.


7. Once the salt is mixed in, you can turn off the mixer and scoop out the butter into pre-chilled containers. The fresh butter tastes the best the first few days and especially the day of so if you're having a fancy dinner party or awesome breakfast, whip it a few hours before.

A pint of whipping cream fills about 3 butter dishes like the one pictured below: