Sunday, July 12, 2009

Homemade butter, bitches!

Today, I made my own butter. I am very pleased with myself. Clearly.

It is actually very easy, if you have a food processor. You just put a quart of heavy cream in the food processor, hit on, and wait 4 minutes. The cream separates into butter and butter milk. Strain out the buttermilk and tada! Butter!

I saw Tyler Florence make butter like this during a breakfast-themed show. He made orange honey butter and used the buttermilk to make buttermilk berry scones. It looked so simple; I couldn't wait to try his butter trick. The scones, however, were a different story.

I am afraid of scones. They just seem so fickle. If the butter is not cold enough, they are too dense, if the butter is too worked through, they are too hard, if the butter pieces are too big... well you get the picture. Needless to say, I was wary.

Since the food processor was in the sink (from the butter), I ended up mixing the scone batter with a fork, instead mechanically, like Tyler says. I think the manual labor did the trick. I was able to control the size of the butter pieces with the fork and avoided over-mixing.

The scones were amazing. The fresh buttermilk, the blueberries, and the orange honey butter only heightened the moist center and the crunchy crust. The only thing I would change is the amount of berries I added. I overdid it and the berries added too much moisture.

This is a great recipe. The whole thing, including making the butter, takes about 30 minutes (not counting baking time). Try it next time you want to impress people. There is nothing like flavored butter from scratch to wow a crowd.


The leftover buttermilk.



Anyone need any butter?

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can beat that. At Thanksgiving, my family makes butter by shaking heavy cream in a jar. No technology for us! Look through my photoblog circa November 2007 if you want to see pics :)

AV

1:11 PM  
Blogger Deepa said...

Haha - that was the recipe's alternative if you didn't have a food processor! Josh and I were like.. uhhh.. no thanks:)

1:48 PM  

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