Heaven truly is a taste of homemade butter! And you’re closer than you think. Turning heavy cream in to whipped buttery goodness is only 30 minutes away. All you need is a carton of heavy cream and you are in business. So what inspired me to make my own butter? My sister, Francine (the pastry chef) teaches a cooking class to high school students in Seattle and she was telling me all about her experience making butter with her students. They were so excited and impressed by the process and I just knew I would have to try it in my own kitchen as soon as possible. I happened to have a carton of heavy cream in my fridge from the pumpkin oil ice cream I recently made and this was the perfect way to use up the leftover cream! So get ready to make some homemade butter because I know you are all going to run out to buy heavy cream after you see how easy it is to make! But wait, it gets even better! In the process of making the butter, you are also going to make pure buttermilk and there is just nothing wrong with that! So I bake an old fashioned buttermilk chess pie, made with both the homemade butter AND buttermilk. Absolute perfection!
Homemade Butter
1 quart heavy cream
1 stand mixer with whisk and paddle attachments
1 towel
1 extra stainless steel bowl
I poured the heavy cream in to my stand mixer with a stainless steel bowl and began whisking at medium speed.
I kept the mixer going as the heavy cream turned in to whipped cream. Keep going…
When the whipped cream began to break and looked a bit chunky, I switch to the paddle attachment. At this point, I suggest placing a towel over the stand mixer since the milk will begin to separate from the cream and it might splash. You can lower the speed a bit if there is too much splashing for your liking.
When the milk separated from the cream, I turned the mixer off. This whole process took around 20-30 minutes (I wasn’t timing it since I was actually on the phone with my sister the entire time). And there you have it! Butter is made!
I lined a stainless steel bowl with a towel then poured in the butter and buttercream mixture.
The buttermilk went right through the towel in to the bowl then I twisted the towel around the butter and squeezed, just like you would do with spinach.
At this point, you can refrigerate the buttermilk and get a  taste of the butter! Creamy, rich and oh so perfect!
If you are planning to use it within 24-48 hours, you don’t need to take the next step of washing the butter and you can just spread it on a slice of bread, melt in a pan and make some absolutely perfect eggs (that’s what I did), make a compound butter with roasted garlic or do whatever else you want with it! But if you want to freeze the butter or use it for the next few weeks, you must wash all of the remaining buttermilk out. I placed the butter back in a bowl in the stand mixer with 1 cup of water and covered the mixer with a towel to avoid getting splashed. I turned the mixer on low and beat the butter for around 1 minute. I placed the butter back in the towel and squeezed out the liquid one more time. Please note that you shouldn’t save this cloudy water as buttermilk since it is mixed with regular water. Just throw it out! If you want whipped butter, you can place it back in the mixer one more time with another cup of water and mix again. The water should be clear after mixing by this point. I didn’t want whipped butter so after the first time mixing, I was done! I spread the butter on a slice of bread for little bites of happiness! I rolled the rest in plastic wrap and refrigerated for later.
Okay, maybe ‘later’ came right away! I was just so excited to use the fresh homemade butter and buttermilk. My mind went right to buttermilk pie and my sister recommended trying buttermilk ‘Chess’ pie, a Southern custard pie with the addition of cornmeal to the batter. It didn’t take long to find the perfect recipe from Deep South Dish and I didn’t want to change a thing! The recipe was just so perfect. Unlike my usual rule to change something in every recipe I make, I followed this recipe exactly (okay, almost exactly). Â Just click HEREÂ for my printable version of the recipe, with a few little updates!
Look at this beautiful pie!!! I thought it was going to be really sweet because my house smelled like sugar and buttermilk and well, everyone online says that chess pie is very sweet, but the creamy custard was buttery, lemony and mild. I think if you are using buttermilk from a carton, the pie will be a bit tangy and even sweeter but homemade fresh buttermilk has a much lighter taste. Just make sure to let the pie cool completely to give the custard a chance to set. Enjoy!
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