I made butter!

I was perusing a popular food blog today, and came across this yummy looking item. Cinnamon butter, mmmm. The Texas Roadhouse serves a honey-cinnamon butter with their rolls. And Country Crock made a cinnamon butter for a while but no longer does. Then I thought, I can make butter right? Yes, yes I can. (Oh, and yes, I do most of my shopping at Shaw's. How'd you know?)

It's so easy to make. Whipping cream, sour cream (this was to make the butter more like cultured butter) and salt. I used this recipe and doubled it. Two cups of cream, two tablespoons of sour cream, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. I actually added another pinch because it didn't sound like enough. So, I put the ingredients in my Kitchenaid, and let 'er rip for about 7 minutes.

Before whipping

About 2 minutes in, it's getting a little thicker

About 5 minutes in, it's getting buttery and yellow! Though at this point I did stop a few times to scrape the sides of the bowl. It wasn't mixing as well as I would have liked.

And .... done.

That was the easy part. I then emptied the bowl into my mesh strainer, over another bowl, letting the fresh buttermilk drip through. It provided exactly one cup of buttermilk. I actually used that for a loaf of zucchini bread afterwards (the recipe is here).

Once all of the milk dripped out, I squeezed the butter in paper towels to be sure all of the liquid was removed. Once it was, I tried some of the plain butter on a piece of my wheat bread, very good it was. I put the rest of the butter back into the mixer and whipped it with about 1 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon and a 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of sugar (I didn't really measure this out.) I whipped it up for a minute and transferred it to a small jar. I didn't measure it exactly, but it seemed to make about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of butter (1 1/2 sticks).

Now I needed to test my final product. Would it be good for cinnamon toast? Duh. Of course it was good on toasted wheat bread. I think I found another homemade Christmas present for everyone!!! And there was just something so satisfying about eating cinnamon toast with the bread AND butter that I made from scratch! (Although me two months ago would have told me I cheated for using a mixer, but this is the new me who loves my Kitchenaid!!!)