The cost of butter continues to rise and for some brands shrinkflation has turned the old standard 250gm (roughly 2 sticks or 8 ounces for US folks) into 200gm packs (about 7 ounces).
So when an opportunity for some inexpensive butter arises, it's well worth taking it.
In a local supermarket yesterday there were four tubs of Double (Heavy) Cream for 81 pence each, I snapped them up. These are normally £2.85 each.
I already had a tub of creme fraiche in the fridge which I added in.
Mixing them all at the same time would have been great, but I dont have a machine or the space to do so!
So, in the trusty Kenwood Chef I added a tub of cream and a quarter of the creme fraiche, draped a towel over to limit splashing, and set the whisk on high.
If you've made butter you know the cream will split into more fluid buttermilk and higher fat solids. You can hear the difference as the whisk works it's way through the mixing bowl.
At this point I swapped the whisk fo the beater attachment, drained off the buttermilk into a seperate bowl, and beat the butter for another minute or two.
From there the butter went into a bowl of chilled water to wash it, and then it's time squeeze out excess moisture.
Then, you can add in anything you want to the butter. I did a couple of packs with smoked seasalt, most with plain salt, and some with anchovies - which I'll use next time I'm doing steak.
For packaging I find using baking paper nice and easy, though I've seen some folks using cling film and rolling it into a sausage shape. I thin this works well if you add herbs and want to slice small roundels and in hindsight doing it with the anchovy butter may have been worth trying.
But I didn't and, indeed, it wasn't until I'd finished and packaged everything that I even thought about taking pictures.
All in I made 1.5kg (3.3lbs) of butter from 2.4 litres of cream and 300ml of creme fraiche (5.75 pints in total) for a cost of £4.29.
In my local supermarket their own brand would cost £12 for that amount. For Kerrygold butter it'd be £19.50
Looking at Krogers online it'd cost $12+tax for the budget brand and for Kerrygold a whopping $33+tax (I still find it weird that in the US the price you see at the shelf edge isn't what you pay at checkout)
That's a big saving.
From the pics you can see most of it has been vacuum packed and will go into the freezer and taken out as required. If that isn't a viable option for yourself then some homemade butter makes for a delightfully quirky gift to pass to friends and neighbors.
Lastly the buttermilk. I strained it through a muslin cloth and used some to marinade chicken, and the rest I will use to make US style biscuits, maybe with some nice cheddar in them.
If I remember, I'll take pictures. I've done biscuits a few times and am quite comfortable making them, though they never seem to rise enough.
Oh, a last thing. Previously when making butter I've hated the feel of it in my hands. Today I purchased some food grade gloves and, while the process is still messy, that greasy feel on the hands was avoided.