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Hi Bold Bakers!
Butter is the backbone of all baking. Being from Ireland, I know great butter.
Usually I get inspiration for recipes from my Bold Bakers (that’s you!). How to Make Homemade Butter was requested a lot from people who said butter was very expensive in their country. However, after tasting this Homemade Butter I want everyone to make it! EVERYONE!
Not only was it fascinating to make, but immensely satisfying. It takes no time at all, no special equipment, and it’s a pleasure to make. Also, make sure to check out more of my Bold Baking Basics.
Butter Ingredients
Making your own butter doesn’t require you to churn butter like it’s the 1800s. In fact, in terms of ingredients, you only need heavy cream, salt and ice water. That’s right, only three ingredients are needed for this butter recipe.
What You’ll Need For This Homemade Butter Recipe
- Stand mixer or electric hand mixer with whisk attachment
- Sieve
- Bowl
- Tea towel or cheesecloth
- Measuring cups
[ Once you master this butter, try out my Flavored Butter recipes! ]
How To Make Homemade Butter
Making your own butter is not only super effortless, you’re actually making two products: easy homemade butter and buttermilk. Because one of the byproducts from this process is the most delicious buttermilk (and don’t forget to get the full recipe with measurements, on the page down below.).
- Once you’ve made butter at home, you’ll never go back to store bought. With only a few necessary tools of the trade needed, here’s how to make butter.
- Pour the cold cream into your food processor. You can also use an electric hand mixer or stand mixer.
- Whip the cream until it separates. After around 2 ½ minutes you will see it start to over whip and really thicken — don’t stop!
- After around 4 minutes it should be fully separated. You can see yellow buttery solids and a cloudy liquid at this point.
- Once it separates pour in your ice cold water. This helps separate the butter fully and it separates from the liquid (buttermilk) and you will see even more buttermilk appear.
- Once your butter forms, place a sieve over a bowl and pour in the contents of the mixer.
- The liquid that remains is buttermilk. Save the buttermilk in the fridge and use it in your baking or to marinade meat.
- Squeeze the butter solids in your hands to make sure there is NO more buttermilk in there. You want to remove it all otherwise your butter will be wet. Also you can squeeze it in a clean tea towel or a cheesecloth.
- Stir in some salt or flavors to your soft butter. This butter recipe will yield you over 2 sticks/10oz/ 300g of butter.
Homemade Butter Consistency
After you’ve finished making the butter, it should be soft and have that classic buttery consistency. If the butter feels a little wet, I’d recommend making sure that you’ve separated the butter from the buttermilk.
How Long Does Homemade Butter Last?
You can store homemade butter in a jar in the fridge for 6 weeks. It will then be ready to use in your baking, savory dishes or even on toast.
Get more Baking Basics recipes:
And don’t forget to buy my Bigger Bolder Baking Cookbook!
Full (and printable) recipe below!
Try These Recipes!
Watch The Recipe Video!
How to Make Homemade Butter Recipe
Ingredients
- 3 cups (24floz/720ml) heavy cream (high fat content)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 5 tablespoons Ice water
Instructions
- Pour the cold cream into your food processor. You can also use an electric whisk or stand mixer.
- Whip the cream until it separates. After around 2 ½ minutes you will see it start to over whip and really thicken. Keep going. After around 4 minutes it should be fully separated. You can see yellow buttery solids and cloudy liquid at this point.
- Once it separates pour in your ice-cold water. This helps separate the butter fully separate from the liquid (buttermilk) and you will see even more buttermilk appear.
- Place a sieve over a bowl and pour in the contents of the bowl.
- The liquid that remains is buttermilk. Save it in the fridge and use it in your baking or to marinate meat.
- Squeeze the butter solids in your hands to make sure there is NO more buttermilk in there. You want to remove it all otherwise your butter will be wet. Also, you can squeeze it in a clean tea towel or a cheesecloth.
- Stir in some salt or flavors to your soft butter. This recipe will yield you over 2 sticks/ 10oz/ 300g of butter.
- Store in the fridge for 6 weeks and use it in your baking, savory dishes, or even on toast.
Recipe Notes
We do it a bit differently, in India. We set a curd from the cream of the milk that we get daily. We keep adding the cream allow it ti set and refrigerate. Around 15 days and we have a good amount of this cream-curd. Then we do what you did. Whip in a hand mixer using ice cold water. That is our white butter! And of course the butter milk, which we can flavour with mint/ginger and salt and drink loads! Then we keep it in the fridge in water, so that it freezes. The next step is to… Read more »
I am trying to figure out what I’m doing incorrectly. I made two batches of butter, back to back, using Kitchen Aid blender, whisk. Fresh heavy duty heavy cream. One batch takes only a few minutes to form butter, the other batch takes over 40 minutes. I can’t figure it out. What do you think is going on?
Thanks
Sorry I forgot to put how many stars on my last comment.
Gemma, I used the food processor for the butter making process and it came out great! It was much simpler than the Kitchen Aid Mixer! I do need to get some cheese cloth. There is something so special about gifting someone with homemade bread and a container of homemade butter!
Thank you for your correspondence and encouragement!
Candy from Alabama
Hey Gemma,
Can we use Half and Half Cream?
I made this on thursday. It turned out great and the taste is so yummy. Thanks gemma, you make it a lot easier for me. Sending you hugsss ???????? with love from ????????
Will this keep in the freezer?
I tried making butter both with a food processor and electric mixer.But it never turned into butter it remained whipping cream even after 10 minutes.please help!
This worked great. Could not be easier.
Easy peasy butter squeeze! Love the recipe, used it after I found 300ml cartons of double cream for 41p in the supermarket here in the UK!