Two Easy Ways to Make Your Own Butter At Home (Great For Flavored Butter and Kids Activities)

This weekend the boys and I made butter at home by hand... and we loved it... and it is SO easy!  My sister-in-law originally laughed at what we were doing, then after tasting our butter with chives, promised to never laugh at our butter creations again!  ;)

We made regular butter, and butter with chives, then stored them in small containers.

There are two ways of making your own butter (that I know of), by shaking a container by hand, or by using a mixer.  I have not tried the mixer method, but here is a great post from Free Range Living on making butter with a mixer, as well as some additional tips.

Here's how to make it via shaking it by hand...

What you will need to make your own butter: 

A jar or container that has a tightly closing lid
Heavy Cream (sometimes called Heavy Whipping Cream)
Salt (optional)
Other ingredients to make flavored butter (these are ideas only)
     chives
     garlic
     honey
     lemon
     dill
     sundried tomatoes

Directions

1. If you want a flavored butter, put any ingredients into your container
2. Pour your heavy cream into the container until it is about 2/3 full (you need room in the container for it to make whipping cream which will then turn into butter, but it gets nice and fluffy first)
3. Close the lid tightly and begin shaking it.
         ** this is the part the kids generally love to help with... they just pass it back and forth **
4. Before it turns into butter, it will turn into really smooth and fluffy whipping cream, so don't stop here, keep shaking!
5. You know you are done when the butter suddenly starts separating from the whey and you end up with a light colored liquid (butter milk) and the slightly more yellow butter.
6. Drain the butter milk from the container, replace the lid and shake just a little more, drain again.
7. Your butter is ready to use! 

Chive Butter Made By Hand With The Kids (1 1/2 and 4 1/2 year old boys)

Here is our chive butter, which was wonderful on toasted bread!

There are endless possiblities as far as flavoring your butter, so I hope you will stop by and let me know what flavors you have made!

This is also a great kids activity at a party or pre-school. The kids love the process and then can eat some with bread or scones (pancakes, mashed potatoes, etc) and take credit for making it!

Here is a great place to find ideas on flavors for your butter from Taste of Home's Community Forum: Look! Over 60 Flavored Butter Recipes Inside!