Winter butter

Dear old Hazel the milk cow is dried up. So this week when we went over to take a couple of piglets to our friends Donna & Keith, we came home with 8 gallons of their yummy raw milk.

So this morning I skimmed all the cream off before I froze the excess milk to use later. 

 I make butter using my blender. I find that the food processor doesn't work well at all. It heats the cream up too much and it seems to break up the butter fat instead of encouraging it to clump together.

My blender has a High/Low switch at the bottom. I set it to low for butter. Then I only used the 2 slowest settings- Blend when I start the cream. Grate when it gets to the almost butter stage. The cream looks like this when your first whir it in the blender.

When the butter fat begins to gather it looks like this. Now it's time to strain the butter milk away.

We feed the buttermilk to the piglets. They love it!!

After the butter milk is strained away the butter has to be worked to remove more of the milk. The milk hides in little pockets in the butter so I use a wide bamboo spoon to work the butter against the side of my big crockery bowl.

Then rinse with cold water and repeat working the butter until all of the milk has been worked out and the water is clear.

Then add sea salt to taste. Mix it in well and form the butter into balls. My hands are small and I've been doing this for a long time so I know my butter balls are about 1cup each. There are butter molds or the butter could be put in plastic wear. Butter will keep for about 6 months in the freezer.
Because this is winter butter it is pale yellow. The cows don't have fresh green grass in winter so there is less carotine.