Butter (cont.)

The butter turned out okay. Better than okay. It is amazing! And it was fun to make, too. Athanasia, the little bo... whoops!... the "big boy" and I took turns shaking the cream. We put two pints of heavy cream in a 1 liter plastic container, added a big marble and shook it a long time. We had whipped cream in a jiffy, but it was a long long time (15 minutes?) before the whipped cream turned into butter. So, in case you are wondering, 2 pints of heavy cream yields about 1/2 pound of butter and a glass of butter milk. But this is not like the buttermilk sold in stores. The kind bought in stores isn't really buttermilk. It is "cultured buttermilk", a fermented milk product. What we made yesterday was sweet, or "old fashioned" buttermilk. (Dr. David Frankauser will happily explain the difference.) In short, sweet buttermilk is yummy, while cultured buttermilk is reminiscent of baby puke. I think I might have to make butter every week just to get some of that yummy buttermilk. Of course, that will be after Great Lent.