Disclosure Statement

This policy is valid from December 23, 2009

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me (Amy @ Raising Arrows).  As owner of this blog, I do accept forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.  However, this compensation will NEVER influence the content, topics, or posts of this blog.  I cherish my creativity.

I am occasionally compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics, but the opinions I express are honest and real; not the fabrication of a blogger under the influence of the almighty dollar. 

The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog will never allow content which might present a conflict of interest or compromise the moral integrity of the blog owner.

For questions about this blog and/or advertising on Raising Arrows, please contact Amy (heritagearrows at yahoo dot com).

To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

How to Make Butter

Since the cream jar was full today, I made butter!

Recently, we switched raw milk suppliers so this was our first batch from milking shorthorns rather than jersey.

I have a Bosch mixer and that's what I use to make butter. I use the whisk attachment. My friend, M____, who taught me how to make butter, uses her blender.

Simply dump the cream into the blender or bowl and turn it on (I am soooo thankful every time I do this that I live in an age where electricity does the work for me--not sure I have the patience for a churn!)

M_____ is able to tell by a sound difference when the cream has become whipped cream, but I have to watch. When it looks like whipped cream, it IS whipped cream! At this stage you could add sugar (or other sweetener) and vanilla and use it just as you would the stuff from the store.

However, if you are going for butter, KEEP GOING...

Eventually, the butter will seperate from the buttermilk (a thin, watery looking milk). The butter will look like floating chuncks. The jersey butter was VERY yellow. This butter is a lot whiter and not as stiff.

Next step is to drain off the buttermilk (you can use this in recipes) and scoop the butter into a glass bowl or measuring cup. You then run about 1/2 cup of cold tap water (hot will make the butter melt and be too runny to work with) over it and work the water throughout the butter with a wooden spoon or a plastic scraper--something flat works best. The liquid will become milky looking as you work it around and then you pour that liquid off. You continue this process until the liquid is fairly clear (5-6 times). This is an important step b/c if you do not do this properly, you will have YUCKY tasting butter--think COW.

Today, I decided to add honey to my butter b/c I have quite a bit of butter already in the freezer. This batch made about 2 c of butter, so I added in about 1/2 a cup of honey and stirred it around.

If I am going to put the butter right in the refrigerator, I just put it in a plastic container and pop a lid on it. Today, I lined a muffin tin w/ baking cups, scooped the honey-butter into the baking cups and put them in the freezer. Once hardened, they go into a plastic freezer bag.

And that's it! Start to finish--about 10 mins.