The Art Of Butter

Butter.

Soft. Creamy. Slowly slipping sideways on a slice of fresh bread. Oozing it’s melty goodness as you take a bite. Salty and sweet all at the same time. Perfect.

If you have jumped on the raw milk revolution, you’ve got plenty of delicious cream just sitting around waiting to be used up. What better, more worthy recipe could you choose than butter.

I skim some cream off of every ½ gallon jar of milk I open (with a turkey baster!) and, after using it in my morning coffee, I always have some left. This morning, eager to try my hand at butter making, I poured about a pint of fresh cream into my mixer and turned it on. (A quart of cream will net you about a pound of butter.)

Unfortunately, I learned a little late that you should start this process with warm (room temperature) cream. Mine was cold, straight from the refrigerator, so this whole process took me about 45 minutes. I’m guessing that it should only really be ten minutes or so if you start out right.

With my whisk on my stand mixer, I let the cream become whipped. Then, while the mixer was running, I looked up more information about making butter. All right. I know I should have done that before I turned the mixer on, but I learned a lot while my cream warmed up enough to separate.

As I checked in on my cream I noticed a few stages that you can look for as you make your butter. First, it looked like whipped cream (because that’s what it was. And yes. I tasted it. And it was GOOD!). Then it started to collapse in on itself. Next it began to look like it was curdling. And finally, they curds meshed together into two or three big balls of butter, floating on a little lake of whey.

See, with warm cream, the fat can squeeze together until every fat molecule is touching another fat molecule and all the whey, or butter milk, is squished out.

So now, I have some buttermilk with which I will make pancakes in the morning, and I have some beautiful butter, which I salted.

Now, I did not take this next step because the amount of butter I made was not enough to worry about it needing to keep very long, but if you want your butter to last more than a couple of days, you’ll need to kneed some cold fresh water through it to remove every bit of butter milk that might remain. (You’ll know it’s gone when your water comes out clear). The buttermilk sours quickly and ruins your butter in you don’t take this step.

You can do this in a regular bowl with a hand held whisk, or you can put your cream in a mason jar and shake it like crazy for about 6 or 7 minutes. Or, you can give that mason jar to your kids and let them roll it around the floor to each other for the same amount of time. Just make sure your cream is warm and the agitation will do the rest.

Enjoy, friends. This recipe is truly delicious and worth the work!

Tangy Twist on Pancakes

This morning, after discovering that I didn't have enough yogurt for all of the children to enjoy, I decided to find a new use for it. Katie requested pancakes for breakfast so I vowed to find a good way to use the last strawberry yogurt in the meal. I first thought of topping the pancakes with a little dollop, but then I thought of the mess that would occur and I quickly changed tactics.

I used my usual batter recipe and reduced the milk by about 3/4 cup. Then I whisked in the yogurt (or yor-gut if you are one of my twins)and sprinkled in a handful of chocolate chips. (These were really for me, since I needed something chocolate after my morning)
The yogurt added a light tang in the background of flavors and the texture was heavenly. I highly recommend you give this a try the next time your little ones have eaten all but one of the ten thousand yogurts that come in a giant box from your local club warehouse store!

**Note: I use a single recipe right now for my family. The babies don't eat enough yet to warrant any more. However, if you double or triple your recipe, you'll need to do the same with your yogurt. My yogurt was 6 oz. **

Pizza: Variations On A Theme

I was all set to make pizza for dinner tonight. My darling loves my pizza and I thought that after a tough week, it would be a great way to kick off the weekend. I went to the kitchen to make the dough and, as I reached for the flour, my heart sank.

Somehow I managed to run out of white flour. I can get away with 1/2 & 1/2-ing the whole wheat flour, but I can't make pizza dough with just whole wheat! So plan B: Pizza Quesadillas! Not nearly as satisfying, I think, but we'll give it a try! I have about a hundred tortillas in my freezer . . .No chance of running out of those!

My Best Oatmeal

My dear sister Jennie posted her oatmeal recipe today. In response to her request for other recipes, here's my favorite.

In a large pot, add 2 1/2 cups water & 2 1/2 cups milk (you may exchange some of the milk for cream or 1/2 & 1/2 if you are feeling rich)

Bring this just to a boil and add 3 cups of quick cooking oats. Cook for the length of time recommended by your package directions. Then, turn off the heat and immediately add 1/2 tsp salt, brown sugar to taste (recommend about 1/2 cup) & 1 tsp cinnamon. You may, of course, also add dried fruit to this if you wish. Or, as my darling husband likes to, you can add a dollop of your favorite jam or jelly on top!

It is very important that you do not add the salt or sugar to the oats while they are cooking. The oats will not release their creamy starches into the liquid if there is salt or sugar to compete with. This will result in a gloppy, sticky, unappealing mess! Waiting until after the oats have finished cooking allows the liquid to become smooth, creamy and delicious.

Give it a try, and let me know how it turns out!

Forgotten

I was careful to remember it. I have, in the past, completed the first few steps, forgotten the project and ended up with less than great results, so I kept reminding myself.

The children went to their naps with ten minutes left to wait until the next step. I went downstairs to check on business e-mails and the like. I came back up when the babies made noise and I smelled it.

Oh NO! I groaned out loud. But a peak in the oven told me everything was alright. After more than three hours of being ignored, my loaves of bread were still puffy and patiently waiting for me to turn the oven on! Whew!

Now I better go back up before I burn it!

Making Dumplings

Thanks to these nifty folding step stools Munga and Papa brought by for us, Katie and Josie helped me make dumplings last night.

They happily mixed up the flour, baking powder and salt: (This is Josie)



And Sarah inspected the stools:



She soon decided that she really wanted to be a part of whatever was going on up on the counter:




And everyone rolled the dough into balls. Even little Sarah.




After many many MANY reminders not to eat the raw dough (they would roll it, show it to me and then take a bite! lol) we finally were able to put the dough in the big pot of chicken soup. Then, they set the table and we had some very good eats, made all the better by little tiny helping hands.

Timers, Chores, and Christmas

I use my timer a lot. I have a great little one that my friend Nicole gave me for the kids (it's supposed to help you time the 4 - 6 hours between medicine dosages) but I haven't used it for them once. Instead, I set it for 15 minutes and do my chores. It really makes a big difference.

These days, with Christmas creeping ever closer, I'm doing a lot of baking. I just love to bake things. I spend most of the year looking forward to having a reason to do the mixing and shaping and cooking that I get to do in these few precious weeks before the big day.

And what do you use a lot when baking cookies? A timer! So I recently (yesterday) decided that I could combine my two timed tasks. Every time I replace the cookie sheet in the oven, I have about 7 to 10 minutes to get a chore done. It's less time than I usually allow for things and I often have to go back to it once I've done the next cookie swap, but it makes the chores so much nicer to do, knowing that there is something fun to do every time that timer goes off.

"Great Cook"

I was in the doctors office a while back. I was pretty sick feeling at the time and had to sit in the waiting room for about two and a half hours while the doctor finally got around to seeing me. While sitting there, my husband, who very sweetly drove me there, struck up a conversation with the kind old lady who was waiting with us. Pretty soon, another woman came in who was around my age, maybe a bit older, who had just had triplets six months ago. So she and I chatted for a little while about the fun and difficulties of having multiples. She was pretty opinionated about things and a little odd to talk with but it was better than sitting there doing nothing.

Soon the talk between us turned to cooking and she told me how great a cook she was. My sweety and the old lady happened to stop talking just in time for her to say: "Bisquick is the greatest!"

Great cook? Bisquick? So I said "Really??"

She began to tell me all the wonderful things she makes with this stuff. Pancakes, waffles, biscuits of course . . . she puts it in things, on things, next to things. Goodness gracious!

I wanted to educate her about how easy it is to make these things from scratch. With just a handful of ingredients you can make things that taste so much better. Why on earth are you using this stuff and calling yourself a great cook?!!

Instead, being sick and lacking the energy for an indignant outburst, I smiled condescendingly (or what I hope came across as condescending) and stopped talking. Maybe she thought I was rude, but quite frankly, I thought she was insane for bragging about her Bisquick talents!

A Terrible Baking Mishap

The incredible aroma of almonds and chocolate filled the house. My mouth was watering for that first crisp bite that I knew I would have to wait a little longer for. I waited for the buzzer, ready at the edge of my seat. It rang. I jumped, excited that there was only one more step. The logs of goodness would have to be removed from the oven, cut into cookies and toasted before I could share them with our company and enjoy one myself.

I opened the oven, pleased with the light golden color of the tops of my biscotti. And then I saw it. In disbelief I stared the terrible blight on one of my masterpieces. I quickly examined the other three logs to find that they, too, had been tainted. I think I might have let a whimper escape my lips.

My double batch of biscotti (*sob*) was ruined by an exploding oven lamp! I've never had that happen to me before. Most of the bulb was sitting on top of the log directly in front of the fixture and there were tiny shards of glass baked into the other three logs.

Maybe my oven is allergic to nuts . . .

Mixer Magic

I am the very proud owner of a Kitchen Aid Professional Stand Mixer and, if you've read this blog for a while you've probably read something about it. It worked magic for me yesterday and I just can't get over how easy it makes life!

I'm doing a lot of baking for Christmas this year, which I have done for several years now. My first and second years doing this were a little skimpy because everything was done one batch at a time by hand. I didn't have any good equipment to bake with.

But now I have this mixer and it easily handles two, three, four, sometimes five batches at a time of my favorite recipes! Yesterday I managed to cook over 12 dozen cookies and freeze them. It took about 5 hours all together.

Now, if only I had a bigger oven . . .