I finished my practicals at school for my last class this semester and the last class for my baking certificate program (yay!); Advanced Baking and Pastry. In a two day period, I made the following: two loaves of honey challah, two baguettes, 18 croissants, pate choux with pastry cream, and a nasty semifreddo with a strawberry coulis. Then at home I made two 14 inch cakes, a dozen chocolate-chocolate cookies, and a loaf of banana-chocolate bread. Suffice to say, carb overload. Thankfully I was unable to unload much of it at the office of my previous employer.
In doing so, it was reached with much praise and gratitude. However, someone made the point that some butter would have been appreciated. A fine point. At any given time I will have 4 pounds of butter in the refrigerator ready to roll, do as I want. Most of the time it is not nearly enough and thus I stock up on it when it is on sale at the big box grocer. It’s cheap, and not that great, but it serves it’s purpose. That purpose however would not suffice on my baked products. After that co-worker made the butter comment, I immediately thought of this homemade butter clip.
After watching the clip a few times, I took my heavy whipping cream out of the refrigerator to let it come to room temperature.
I poured the cream into a plastic takeout container and started shaking. Shaking. SHAKING AWAY! I shook it for a good ~20 minutes or so with some breaks in between (not because I was tired – I have Michelle Obama arms!).
THIS is what came out from that first 20 minutes of shaking. I strained in a semi-meshed strainer. What was extracted with the strainer was buttermilk. Not only did I make butter, but I also made buttermilk! You can also see the butter that is sticking to the sides of the container. What remains in the strainer though, is the start of some delicious butter! Per Karen’s instructions, I added some water and shook just a bit more. In fact not too long at all. Minutes that were in fact not counted by tens!
LOOK!
How pretty is that? It’s creamy, light smooth – wonderful! Don’t you just want to put that on your challah, or baguette, or toast? It will be glorious!
Now I will have devise plans to make something with my buttermilk…
*happy sigh* I love buttermilk. How’s about baking some buttermilk biscuits? :) I lerrrrrrve buttermilk biscuits!
true! BUT – I am still trying to eat all of this challah.