(Still at the whipped cream stage.)
My mom and other people have always said that if you make whipped cream and whip it too much you'll end up with butter. My mom also told me a story once about an elementary school teacher she knew who would bring in a quart of cream on the first day of school and make the kids shake it until it turned into butter, and then they would eat it on crackers.
(Maybe I should have stopped at this point?)
Well, John and I used cream to make something a while back and then weren't sure what to do with it. I decided to try beating it with the hand mixer until it turned into butter, because, you know, why not? We try not to cook with cream often and having a big thing of it in the fridge isn't going to lead to anything healthy. I guess butter still qualifies as unhealthy, but it gets used for lots of different things. And I like a good science experiment in the kitchen.
Like a lot of things I try to make, I should have read about this on the internet before actually trying it. Everything turned out fine, but it took a lot of faith. I used the hand mixer for a solid 15 minutes and throughout I kept thinking "This isn't going to work. Now I just have whipped cream soup."
This is what I ended up with. For some reason, after 15 minutes or so, it went from being solid to producing liquid again. I have no idea why this happened, but the solids in there with the liquid are definitely butter, and I've used it a couple of times. It tastes really good, but a little more like cream than butter I've bought in a store. If you have any insights as to what the deal with the liquid was, I'd love to know! I've drained some of it off, and just let the rest stay. The experiment may not have gone perfectly, but it was fun, and I felt like I'd done a magic trick afterward.
That is some interesting butter funk.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you can bake or cook with it... but perhaps the consistency would ruin things.
Sounds like you had fun though!
I made cookies with it, and my experience so far suggests that it doesn't need to be left out to soften before baking with it (the way most butter does). It's pretty soft. The cookies were a little flatter (which happens with really soft butter) but still delicious!
ReplyDelete