How To Make Homemade Butter By Shaking Cream in a Jar

My friend Ms. Addy gave me a gallon of fresh milk today. The first time that I ever tried it was at her house. It was… different; I’d definitely have to get used to the flavor.

It’s a little bit creamier than store bought, and a little bit salty tasting. I only had a couple of tiny sips, since I’m pregnant, and it wasn’t pasteurized or anything.

Cow’s milk can be affected by what they’ve grazed on. Evidently, hers were eating wild onions. Normally, fresh milk will not taste salty at all, and isn’t an acquired taste!

Here is what I did:

Here’s the gallon of fresh milk. Can you see the cream on top? It’s about an inch thick, and just a shade lighter than the rest of the milk:

fresh milk in jar

Next I tipped the jar, and scooped out as much cream as I could. A large spoon is useful for this, but the best I had was a measuring spoon:

making butter

I filled a little less than a half a quart jar with cream. The next step is to screw the lid on the quart jar well, and SHAKE IT!

It takes about 15 min. of shaking. I kept having to switch hands, as they kept getting tired.

You don’t necessarily have to shake really hard, just keep it going. After a while I looked in the jar and saw the butter forming!

making butter

The cream began to get thicker and turn into clumps, and after a little more shaking yellow butter could be seen floating in the milk:

making butter

I spread the cheesecloth over a bowl and poured the leftover milk off:

making butter

I squished as much of the liquid as I could out of the butter:

making butter

Next I filled a bowl with water, and put the cheesecloth into it. I then put the butter on top of the cheesecloth, and rinsed it and squished it around to get all of the milk out of the butter:

making butter

I did this until the water ran clear. Otherwise the butter would be sour. I then picked up the cheesecloth with the butter in it, and squeezed out the remaining water.

Here is what I got! Some beautiful homemade butter. It only made about 1/4 c. of butter, but it was enough that I could use both of these things to make some yummy banana bread muffins for the kids.

making butter

And they couldn’t get enough! I was so proud of myself. Pretty cool, huh?!

And if you’d like a more “modern” way of making butter, check out this post on how to make butter in a blender.

6 thoughts on “How To Make Homemade Butter By Shaking Cream in a Jar”

  1. I know this is an old post, but I just found it.

    I found cheesecloth in the fabric (sewing notions) department at Walmart. I use it for lots of things in the kitchen. They say (on the package) that it is washable, but not sure I would want to use it again!

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  2. I know this is an old post and you may know this by now, but cheesecloth is usually in the home improvement section of the store – generally with the painting stuff. We looked in the cookware/kitchen gadget section, couldn’t find it, asked an employee and were directed to latex wall paints. We laughed and said, “Guess we’re the only ones left who use CHEESEcloth to make CHEESE.” He looked at us like we had two heads.

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  3. Funny I was just given 6 quarts of heavy cream. We made Butter and whipped cream! Nothing better then fresh and even better FREE!! My hands were killing me! I was also given 50pds of carrots the same day so busy hands i have had.. Bean

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