Do you know what is delicious and makes everything taste better? BUTTER! And do you know what keeps the kids occupied for at least 6-10 minutes? Asking them to make the butter for you! Although making butter in a mason jar may not be the most practical method, it is entertaining for kids that want to be involved in the kitchen. Plus, most kids like the taste of butter and will find the entire process to be pretty fun. I do have to step in to give the jar a few hard shakes to speed along the process...but burning a few calories doing that is probably in my best interest knowing I'm about to eat the butter on EVERYTHING!
INGREDIENTS
A mason jar with a tight fitting lid. I prefer a 16-ounce size when I'm making this recipe but typically give a smaller jar to the kids when they help.
A pint of heavy cream (the higher the fat content, the better)
Cold water
DIRECTIONS
Pour the heavy cream into the mason jar, filling it halfway full. Screw the lid on tightly.
Shake the mason jar for about 5-10 minutes. Note: after about the first 5 minutes you'll have whipped cream inside the jar. That's good! You can stop there if you're tired, or see note at the bottom. But if you want butter, continue to shake HARD for another five minutes.
Open the jar and remove the solids into a large bowl. Discard the liquid that comes out of the jar (although that liquid is buttermilk, so feel free to preserve if you need it for another recipe!)
Pour cold water over the butter in the bowl and use your hands to squish the butter into a ball. Discard the water. Repeat the process two more times. Note: the reason you do this is to remove all buttermilk from the butter and ensure you only have a solid ball of butter remaining.
Voila! You now have butter! At this point you can add in things like salt or honey or herbs to make compound butter.
NOTE: In all honesty - there comes a point where I feel like I've been using a shake weight and can no longer shake the little mason jar. My kids also can't make it to butter consistency and typically stop at whipped cream, vanish with strawberries, and bring back and empty mason jar. If you have a food processor you can achieve the same butter status without the mason jar and shaking (steps 1 and 2 above). Instead, fill your food processor to below the halfway line, and let her rip! The whole process will take less than 5 minutes. Then move on to step 3, above.
Serving size: Varies on size of mason jar