Red Lodge Farm has started selling cream from their raw milk. Or maybe they have always sold it but there was never any on the counter when I arrived until recently.
After my last failed attempt to churn a pat of butter from cream skimmed off the raw milk I get from the farm, I wondered if using cream they’d skimmed for me would be worth a try. It costs £3 for 500ml and is extremely thick.
I deliberated for a week. We are all stocked up with butter since our trip to Helmsley a couple of weeks ago. But curiosity got the better of me.
The upshot is two-fold. Firstly, I now have approximately 300g of butter made by my own hand. No doubt because the cream was so thick, churning it for five minutes – in a bowl with a fork no less – was all that was needed. And the cost is comparable to a good quality butter that I would buy to support local/organic/free-range. Only my butter is even more local (as well as being free-range) and direct from the farmer.
Secondly, the process of making the butter brought to mind a tongue twister: Betty Botter (Carolyn Wells, 1899).
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter;
“But”, she said, “this butter’s bitter!
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter.
But a bit o’ better butter
Will make my batter better.”
Then she bought a bit o’ butter
Better than the bitter butter,
Made her bit of bitter batter better.
So ‘twas better Betty Botter
Bought a bit o’ better butter.
A nice variant on the tongue twister,
I think the one I posted is the original? It’s not the version I’m most familiar with, though I think it is the one a colleague who lectures in drama delights in quoting to me.
Well done for making your butter. When I used raw milk to make butter years ago i discovered that the cream has to be ripe (not off but well populated with bacteria) to work well. Maybe by leaving the cream for a week you got it just perfect to churn. The tongue-twister poem is a new one for me and lovely!
Glad you like the tongue twister!
The thickness of the cream is the most significant factor, I think, because the time that it failed was when I’d left it a week but it was much thinner. Either way, I hope that if I do the same again (thick cream left a few days), the butter will be as easy to make 😃.
Don’t trust me, but check out what is allowed in dairy products by percentage. I’m not saying it, letting you do the research and conclusion being an intelligent person, but I will leave some emoji clues: 🧫 🩸
Why would I do this research, if you don’t mind my asking?
All that other stuff in dairy, it’s been putting me right off.
In all dairy? In organic?
Vegetables I think have the same overall issues, I believe.