Making your own homemade butter is a really fun and easy activity to do together with your child or children. This method is a really simple way for kids to experience the butter making process using a few things you may have at home. With a lot of shaking, and a little bit of patience, they can watch cream turn into solid butter. Best of all, you can eat it afterwards.
All you have to do is fill a mason jar (or very thick glass jar) with some supermarket bought thickened cream. I bought my jar for $2 from IGA. Fill the jar only half way. This gives the contents lots of room to be agitated whilst you or your child shakes it.
Place a small marble in the jar with the cream. This will help the process of shaking and thickening the cream more quickly. It’s important that you place the marble in only after you have added the cream, otherwise you risk shattering the glass jar.
Start shaking and share the shaking with your child if you need to. It has to be pretty vigorous shaking. After approximately 6 minutes, you will see the cream turned to a lovely thickened consistency, similar to that you would use on scones or a cake.
After 15 minutes, the cream will solidify even further. Keep shaking until it thickens to that of butter. You will notice that a liquid separates from the solid. This is butter milk. You will need to strain off the butter milk from the butter solids.
Give the solid butter a quick rinse and form into a ball. Voila you have butter. It tastes delicious and you can use immediately. Store in the refrigerator if you don’t use it all at once. Keep it for up to one week.