52 Homesteading Skills in One Year – Project #10: Making butter
Most people would make butter on their kitchen counter. I made mine crouched on the living room floor. This is where I have been preparing most of my meals over the last few weeks because there aren’t any power outlets in our kitchen, which now looks like this…
Now you may be thinking: Why don’t you just tear the whole thing down and put in a new kitchen?
But what fun would that be? What I really mean to say is we can’t afford to do that because we’re still saving for chickens, beehives and fencing, which will all hopefully arrive on our farm this spring.
So we’ve had to get creative (I mean cheap). We’re giving the old kitchen doors a mission-style look with free pallet wood. The pallets will have a few nail holes and notches, but this only adds character, right? And did I mention the wood was free? We’re covering them with Annie Sloan‘s chalk paint in a cheerful mix of Florence and Old White.
We’re going to leave the doors off of the uppermost cabinets. Not only will this add to the kitchen’s farmhouse look, but it will help open up the tiny space.
The inside of the cabinets have previously been painted, but it’s not easy to clean and the paint is chipping so we’ve started retasking some click flooring to make the base and have begun to add wood paneling to hide the cracks and dents in the old walls. By the way, when I say “we”, I really mean my hard working husband, Jérémie.
I’m also hoping for a backsplash, a new sink and lighting as we complete phase one of our kitchen renovation. Stay tuned for before and after photos in another post
Now about that butter…
How to make homemade butter
2 cups heavy cream or whipping cream
salt (optional)
1. First, you’ll need room temperature whipping cream. Pour your cream in your mixer leaving enough space at the top so you don’t have cream splashing all over your floors… um, I mean your counter. To give you a basic idea, I used two cups of cream in my Vitamix blender.
Thankfully I don’t have to make butter by hand. I’ve got my trusty Vitamix to do all the work for me.
3. Rinse the butter under cool water and then hand squeeze any remaining buttermilk. Otherwise, your butter will quickly go rancid. If you don’t like using your hands, enclose it in cheesecloth and twist one end until all the buttermilk has drained out.
Although I’m pretty good at completing these homesteading projects, writing and taking pictures of them is a different story. But without someone like you to make me accountable I don’t know if I’d actually make it to the end of this challenge so I’m very, very thankful for my 85 readers… er, I mean millions and millions of followers.
I love reading your blogs Kimberlee! Merry Christmas!
Thank you! 🙂 Merry Christmas to you too!
It’s so much fun seeing pics of your renovations, I’m sure that it will look great once you’re done…thank you so much for sharing ? And your butter looks wonderful, you’re a real Martha Stewart…congrats…!
Thank you Mariette! 🙂 But I am no Martha Stewart, unfortunately. Thank you for following me along on this journey!