Butter and buttermilk

Finished butter

I haven't made butter very often in my thermomix. Main reason being is I don't very often see cream on sale, so most of the time it is cheaper to just buy blocks of butter. To make butter, I use pure whipping cream, which was $3.89 for 600ml. Usually you get around 250g of butter from a 600ml container. Butter is usually around $2.40 for a 250g block. Despite this, for the purposes of the blog, I thought I should do it again!

The length of time it takes to churn the butter depends on the freshness of the cream. The expiry date on my carton was July 30th (not a typo - a whole month way), so this batch took about 4 minutes to churn into butter. Last time I made it, it took 40 seconds. So don't give up, it will get there eventually.

Butter solids and buttermilk

The best way to know that the butter is done, is that the measuring cup starts to dance in the thermomix lid as it is churning. At that stage, the butter solids have separated from the buttermilk. As you can see in the photo, the butter ends up looking crumbly, and the buttermilk is separated. Using the tm spatula, I give the butter a good press and push it around the bowl to help squeeze more butter milk out, then put the simmering basket in and drain out the buttermilk. Once i have done that I repeat that process, just to make sure I get the most buttermilk out of it as I can.

Butter about to be washed

Next add the cold water and follow the directions to wash the butter. This helps remove any more buttermilk that is still in the butter, as this is what will go sour first. Its important that the water is really cold so it makes the butter firm and you don't end up with a big sloppy mess. Repeating the straining process again leaves you with lovely butter. If you want to you can do the water cleaning process a second time, but I didn't bother doing that this time.

Spreadable butter

Once I had the butter, I added some grapeseed oil to the bowl and gave it another whizz until it formed a lighter, creamy consistency. I used 50g this time, however I might add a bit more next time just to make it a little bit softer. The addition of the oil means you can put it in the fridge and it will remain soft enough to spread. I prefer to do this with home made butter, just in case there is still a little bit of buttermilk left behind. I usually keep butter on the bench in smaller quantities, but with butter I have made I prefer to keep it in the fridge.

Buttermilk

I ended up with 250g of butter and 300ml of buttermilk. Now I just have to decide what to use the buttermilk for! If you don't need to use it straight away, you can freeze it until you need it.

Happy thermomixing!