Making homemade butter is a fun and easy recipe for kids in preschool all the way through middle school. Most kids, or even adults for that matter, do not realize how easy it is to make butter. With a few supplies and just one ingredient, you can make your own butter right at home.
Supplies. First of all, you need to make sure you have the necessary supplies. You will need your one ingredient, well-chilled whipping cream, and some small containers with screw on lids. Baby food jars work well for small batches of butter, or you can use a canning jar for larger quantities. Just make sure that whatever container you choose has a screw on, not a pop on, lid. If you use a lid that pops on, the gasses that are released as the butter forms may cause the lid to literally shoot right off of your container. What a mess! The larger your jar, the longer it will take to make your butter, so with younger kids definitely use small jars. The only other supply you will need is some bread so that you have something to try out your butter on once it is made.
Procedure. Once you have your needed supplies ready to go, you can get started making butter. Fill your container about 2/3 of the way full with whipping cream. Next, you have to shake, shake, shake the container for several minutes. This is especially fun for younger kids. You may have to help out because it will take quite a bit of very vigorous shaking to make butter. As the kids are shaking, make sure to remove the lid often to observe what is happening inside. At one point you will see that the whipping cream has become fluffy. It has turned into whipped cream! If you taste it, it won’t taste like whipped cream, however, because there is not sugar in it. Eventually it will sound as if the whipped cream has turned back to a liquid. When you remove the lid you will see that a ball of butter has formed, leaving behind a thin liquid, which is buttermilk.
Finish. Once all of your shaking has yielded a ball of butter, drain off the buttermilk and remove the butter to a small dish. Now you can spread the butter right on some bread and taste it right away, or let it chill for a bit before tasting. Either way, your kids may say that the butter tastes a little differently than what they are used to. There are two reasons for this. First of all, most children are accustomed to the flavor of margarine, not real butter. Secondly, most butter that you purchase is salted, so your kids might be missing the flavor of the salt.
Making butter is much easier than most people realize and is a very fun recipe for kids in preschool, elementary, of even middle school to make themselves. Get some whipping cream and a jar and make some butter at your house today!
