Week 20 Craft/Recipe/How to Make Yourself Clean Your Kitchen

This week's post turned out to be quite the learning experience.  Who knew that wanting to "expand your horizons" could be such a challenge?  The inspiration looked innocent enough.  How to make homemade butter.  It's a sweet little post found on the Living Well Spending Less blog.

Make your own butter?  This was a chance to TRULY get my Martha Stewart on.  The recipe is easy enough: a quart of heavy cream, 3/4 teaspoon of fine kosher salt and a stand mixer.  Oh, and don't forget to cover the mixer with a towel because it can get messy.  

It sounded so innocent; it sounded so fun.  I placed the ingredients in the mixer, I put my kitchen towel over the mixer.  Feeling smug with my steaming cup of coffee in hand I turned my mixer on.  Tra la la, I'm making butter.  All is well as I hum a happy tune.  Three minutes in I have whipped cream; life is good.  I wander into the next room...hhhmmm...now that I make my own butter maybe I should try a bigger project like re-upholstering my couch.  Suddenly I hear what sounds like my washing machine freaking out except it's coming from my kitchen.  AAAUUUGGHHH!!!!  I have butter - and bits of butter and buttermilk all over my counter - and all over my floor - and even on my cabinets.  My recommendation is to take a large bath towel, place it under the mixer and wrap it over the top.  At least that way the chaos will be limited to the towel.  Here's the mixer in the aftermath; half of the kitchen looked much the same.  

Somewhere deep down I envision the blogger from Living Well laughing maniacally as she imagines how many reader's kitchens will be turned into combat zones.  

That said...I made butter and it only took about seven minutes.  As per the recipe I ended up with about a pound of butter.  Instead of 2 1/2 cups of buttermilk I ended up with about a cup; the other cup and a half was splayed about my kitchen like brains from a zombie apocalypse.

One thing I noticed is even after squeezing I seemed to have a lot of liquid in the butter.  I split it into two bowls and mixed it well with a fork.  This seemed to bring out the moisture and I drained it off.  So now what to do with a pound of butter?  I made some compound butter -one sweet and one savory.

  Cinnamon Sugar Orange Butter

Ingredients:

8 oz butter

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 - 3 Tablespoons of raw organic sugar

1/4 teaspoon of orange zest

Combine ingredients, place in airtight container and store in refrigerator.  The zest adds a nice bite and keeps this butter from being overly sweet.

Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Butter

Ingredients:

8 oz butter

3 cloves of roasted garlic 

1 teaspoon of rosemary minced 

Combine ingredients, place in an airtight container and store in refrigerator.  

Both these butters are quite delicious.  Would they be equally delicious if they were made with store bought butter?  My guess is yes, but then you wouldn't be able to tell anyone you actually made the butter, and where's the fun in that?