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Have just bought an old BLOW butter churn and have made two attempts at making butter.....unsuccessfully. The first time was with single cream and an hour and half of arm numbing churning, still no separating. Then with double cream and within 7 minutes it was a solid mass. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? There's so much conflicting advice on the net and in books, I thought I'd check here before wasting more cream. (Well it wasn't strictly wasted as I used it in a rather rich baked custard. What better insulation against the cold weather?)

Thanks

Vanessa

I know the feeling - the first time I made butter was in a jam jar with the top of the milk. (Shake, shake, keep on shaking, oh why the hell did I ever think of doing this). But the answer's in your own question. If you use double cream, you end up with severely whipped cream, because the whole thing has gone over and there's no liquid left to continue the process. I suspect that your single cream effort was either not long enough (and it DOES take a long time) or you'd used something like Elmlea (not cream at all). If you can get hold of whole milk and wait for the cream to rise to the top, life becomes much easier. Pur that into your churn/jam jar with a bit of the thinner milk underneath to keep everything going (add salt at the liquid stage if you want salted butter) and then start the violent exercise. Eventually, it can't help but do anything else but turn into butter.

Remember - Charles Atlas was once a nine-stone weakling. (EDIT - no he wasn't - he was a ninety-pound weakling)

Cheers for the reply,

The single cream was definately cream (probably twice the price of bought butter!) So I take it the answer is just keep turning then? Has the temperature got anything to do with it? John Seymour reckons it's got to be 20 degrees C. Then somebody else suggested adding a dollop of sour cream? Yea or Nay?

Thanks

She of the huge triceps!

You know - I just looked up butter making for the first time in years, and everything says that you did nothing wrong - you just stopped too soon. Mind you, everything also says that you can't make butter from single cream, which I know isn't true. Hopefully, someone else has a bit more advice.

I make butter with cheap cream from the supermarket (after christmas I got several pints for 10p each.)

Heres what I do...

Take DOUBLE CREAM best if it is on or just after its bb - it won't work so well with 'fresh cream' but make sure it is not off... it smell real bad if it is.

Pour double cream into the biggest jar you can get your hands on... I use a litre sized pickling jar with a tight lid.

Shake... and shake... and shake...eventually you get whipped cream, it is just solid in the jar and you start thinking... hmm has this worked, but keep going.

All of a sudden the contents of the jar go thunk, they really do, it is very odd. keep shaking until you have one solid lump sloshing about is some creamy liquid.

The liquid is buttermilk... great for pancakes (pour this out into a jug and keep in the fridge)

The solid lump needs cleaned with cold water - I do this by half filling the jar with clean water and shaking the butter around in it, then drain the water and refresh with more clean water... repeat until the water comes away clear, then take the butter out the jars.

Then you squeeze and shape your butter (and add salt now if you like) I use a plastic chopping board and two wooden spatulas (but butter paddle wotsits would be a nice help) squeeze and push until the butter is nice and solid and gives off no more liquid. (your butter will keep for longer the dryer it is)



Good Luck
I would suggest you make butter using this method (so that you know how it feels at the different stages) then go back to your churn...


good luck, please let us know the results

i also make butter
although i do mine in a bowl with a whisk...all you did wrong was stop too soon.
Once you get the cream into a lump, pour off the excess buttermilk(i use mine in scones), then i go to a wooden spatula and knead untill no more liquid can possible come out!, if you add a pinch of salt to every 2 oz or so you will find it keeps longer too!

good luck

Gidday

Sorry to sound a bit dim, but can someone please explain what single and double cream is. To make butter you just want plain off the top of milk or separated from the milk with no doubling and down here I don't think we can get double cream.

Single cream has, I think 19% fat; double cream 46%, whipping cream 35 or so. And there is clotted cream (a Cornish speciality),with well over 50% - almost like butter. To me the concept of different creams was new, too - in Germany we just have whipping cream, at around 28%.

Top of the milk is difficult to get nowadays, as almost all milk is homogenised.

But that's the point, and the thing I was trying to get at earlier. Butter used to be made with the top of the milk. In my book, that's single cream (or the equivalent thereof). Have I been wrong all of these years?

MKG wrote:But that's the point, and the thing I was trying to get at earlier. Butter used to be made with the top of the milk. In my book, that's single cream (or the equivalent thereof). Have I been wrong all of these years?

Top of the milk isn't standardised - but I think that single cream is probably what comes closest to it.

We don't get 'top of milk'... by that I think that you mean the cream that rises to the top of the bottle on milk... well, we don't get it. Our milk is standard right through... (I do remember saving the cream for my mums coffee when I was little) We get our milk delivered in bottles from a local dairy but it doesn't have any cream on top.

In shops you usually have the choice between single cream (pouring cream) and double cream. I got my instructions from a book, which says to use double cream... Idare say there is more that one way to do it... I just wrote what I do, and it works.

Cos of the whole "top of the milk" cream thing, I've got this odd habit of always shaking milk before I use it! Not alot, I just remember as a child ending up with globs of cream in my cereal, and not liking it. So now it's this odd habit that has resulted in many tetra-pack related milk explosions across the kitchen.

I made jam-jar butter yesterday with "creme fraiche epaisse"... which is about 30% fat. So somewhere between single and double. I think anything between 30% and 50% is ideal, according to my research.