Like Buttah!

The other week, when the Chefs came for supper, I made grilled peaches with whipped cream and a balsamic reduction drizzled over them. I had gotten a pint of organic heavy cream to make the whipped cream, and when I went to whip it with my immersion blender, and Chef John said that would turn it into butter, so he whipped it by hand.

Fast forward a week, and I still had the pint of heavy cream, minus a couple of tablespoons. So I thought about what Chef had said and decided to try my hand at making butter! I read through a lot of sets of instructions and concluded that I could probably do this all by myself. I started blending the heavy cream and it got all bubbly looking, but then it started to “break” and the butter solids began to separate from the buttermilk or whey. 

The instructions said to try and get all of the liquid out by pouring it off and then sort of rinsing the butter with ice water until the liquid ran clear. Then I put it into a piece of muslin to press any of the remaining liquid out of the butter.

I added a little bit of sea salt, kneaded it for a minute or two (I didn’t want it to start melting) and then put it into one of my gorgeous little lidded bowls. Tomorrow, I am going to go get some really good bread and try it out.  All in all, it took about 20 minutes from start to finish.

Gawd, this is scary… it’s like aliens have taken me over since I moved out of downtown and into the “country”.

P.S. I went out and bought a mini-baguette this morning, so I could have a French-style breakfast… It was perfect!