Nothing beats Homemade Butter! It’s super easy and almost feels like a trick. Heavy cream takes just 15 minutes to turn into rich butter, ready to spread.
Take things to the next level after making your homemade butter, and make these flavored butters, and spread it on a oven toast or on your favorite biscuit recipe.
I don’t know about you, but I absolutely LOVE homemade bread with butter. Let’s take it a step further and add fresh butter to our slices!
Use this butter to spread on your favorite fluffy pancakes or sweet blueberry waffles. It’s also perfect for frying a bologna sandwich.
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- It uses a few ingredients: Technically you only need one ingredient! Amazing!
- Make-ahead recipe: Butter keeps in the freezer up to a year, so go ahead and make extra.
- Ready in a flash: Super fast, you can make this up in no time. It’s a great project for the family.
Ingredients Needed
Here’s what you’ll need to make this creamy homemade butter.
- Cream – Heavy cream, whipping cream, double cream. This goes by various names depending on where you live so just make sure the label states the fat content. Don’t use anything less than 35% fat.
- Salt – You can choose to add salt or not, just like when you are selecting butter at the store.
- Ice water – This will help the process!
*Be sure to see the recipe card below for the full ingredients list & instructions!*
How to Make Butter in a Mixer
STEP 1. Whip cream. Add the whipping cream to a mixing bowl or your stand mixer and whip until it is whipped cream.
STEP 2. Keep whipping. Now go past this stage until it “breaks” and starts to separate into butter and buttermilk.
Tip: Keep it cold! Start with cold cream, and you can even store the bowl and beater in the fridge until you are ready to begin.
STEP 3. Press. Press the butter together to remove it from the liquid, and transfer it to cheesecloth.
STEP 4. Salt. If you want, after drying the butter, you can add salt by pressing it in with a wooden spoon.
STEP 5. Shape. Shape into a block, sticks, or press it into a container for storage.
Recipe Pro Tips
- Keep it cold. Everything needs to start cold, and stay cold! This will allow you to make butter easily.
- Salt or not to salt. Salt acts as a preservative. If you are keeping the butter out, like in a butter bell, I highly recommend adding salt for longevity. If you are freezing right away, it isn’t necessary. Just label whatever you freeze so you know what you have!
Recipe FAQs
Press the butter into an airtight container. You can store it at room temperature for up to 2 hours, in the fridge for 2-3 weeks, or in the freezer for up to 1 year. The key is to make sure its air tight. Wrapping the butter in parchment paper or plastic wrap is an easy way to ensure this, or I highly recommend storing it in a butter bell.
Instead of using a mixer, you can use a butter churn. It’s usually a jar or a jug with a hand crank. This will take a bit more effort, but the results will be the same.
The heavy cream you use to make homemade butter is very important. Select a product that is above 35% fat (the closer it is to 40% fat, the better). Do not try to use pasteurized grocery store whole milk. It doesn’t contain enough fat and the process is lengthy. It is also helpful to avoid thickening agents or additives in your heavy cream. They will still churn into butter but the process takes longer because the additives are working to prevent the separation.
What to Serve with Butter
The possibilities are endless! You can use it in recipes like butter from the store, such as Cowboy Cookies or Strawberry Scones. Since you’ve made a one-pound block, you’ll want to weigh your butter for baking. Remember that one stick of butter is 4 ounces.
Using Buttermilk
Don’t throw away the buttermilk in the mixing bowl! This can be used in place of water or milk in recipes like sheet pan pancakes or Bisquick biscuits. Keep in mind this is not like buttermilk you buy at the store. That is cultured and very thick while this is thinner like whey.
Use Up Your Butter
Did you make this? I’d be so grateful if you left a “star” rating below to let me know what you thought! Then, the next time you need a quick and easy recipe, come back to Fantabulosity to browse all of my easy recipes!
Recipe
How to Make Butter Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 cups cold water
- 1 cup ice
- 16 ounces heavy cream
- ½ teaspoon salt
- spices and herbs, if desired Get flavored butter recipes!
Instructions
- Fill a bowl with water and ice.
- Place the cold heavy cream in a large mixing bowl and whip on medium speed (I used a stand mixer but you could use a hand mixer instead) until it turns to whipped cream. Whip past this point until it is yellow and chunky. It slightly resembles butter at this point but don’t be fooled, you still have to allow the buttermilk to separate from the butter. Use a spatula to push down any cream that has splashed to the sides. Keep mixing until the buttercream separates from the butter. This happens very suddenly, you’ll see liquid appear separately from the solid butter.
- Using a spoon or spatula, press the butter together and remove it from the buttermilk. Wrap it in a cheesecloth and place it in the ice water. Squeeze the butter in all directions to get the remaining buttermilk out of the butter. The water will turn cloudy, you can dump and refill the ice water multiple times until the water remains clear to make sure you are squeezing out all of the buttermilk.
- Take the butter out of the cheesecloth and place it on a hard flat clean surface, like a cutting board. Pat it dry with a paper towel or cloth and then mix the salt into the butter by pressing and folding with your spatula. Feel free to also use your hands for this, but your hands are warm and will quickly melt the butter so work quickly!
- Press the butter into any shape you wish with a spoon or spatula. A block of butter or you can pack the butter tightly into an airtight container and use it as desired.
Notes
- All ingredients must be very cold at all times or the butter will not solidify. You can pop it into the fridge for 10 minutes if it starts to melt. Some suggest using room temperature heavy cream but for me the very cold methods work best to quickly separate the buttercream.
- It is very important to get the buttermilk out of the butter (by squeezing it in cold water) or it will go bad very quickly. You can also squeeze the butter under running cold water, but this ends up being messy.
Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered estimates. Actual nutritional content will vary with brands used, measuring methods, portion sizes and more.
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