Lavender Butter



Whenever I see a recipe calling for compound butter it always goes something like, "Take butter. Mix in [ingredient]. Voila!" Rarely do you see instructions calling for butter to be actually made. Making your own butter is really not necessary most of the time, but it's still cool.  I don't do it often because I'm lazy, but it's fun every once in a while.

The mechanics of butter-making are pretty simple -- take cream, shake until it's butter. The cream has tiny, tiny globs of butterfat floating around in it, and when you shake or churn it those little packs burst and stick together, making one big clump of butterfat (and lots of watery buttermilk).


















The left picture is before I started shaking, and the right is when the fat is just starting to come together, before I poured off any of the buttermilk. It sort of comes together all at once, getting thicker and thicker until it suddenly congeals into butter.























































Lavender Butter

1 pint good quality heavy whipping cream
2 sprigs worth of lavender leaves, finely chopped
Large jar with trustworthy lid

Add the cream and lavender to the jar, filling it up about halfway. Screw on the lid and start shaking. Shake until your arms hurt, rest, shake some more. After fifteen minutes of shaking the cream will start to puff up (this is why you need the large jar), then begin to separate into a clumpy solid and a liquid. Pour out the liquid and shake some more, repeating until no more liquid comes out. Wrap the butter in plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge (no more than a weekish).


September 1, 2011