A few weeks back I saw on Pinterest how to make butter by shaking it in a jar. I tried it. It turned to whipped cream but nothing more, so I finished it with the mixer instead. It worked alright, but would have been better if I had a stand mixer with a paddle attachment.  But it still turned out okay.  I mixed in some Cajun seasoning to some of it. Not bad for my first go.

Last weekend we were visiting Chad’s family and they had seen my posts on Facebook about my attempt at butter making.  So I’ve been given a couple special family heirlooms that belonged to Chad’s grandpa, and his great grandma before that.  I’ve heard that Chad’s grandpa spent much time using this as a kid.

I was also given two wooden butter molds with it. They’re pretty cool too.

So I was pretty excited to give this stuff a try when we got home.  Got it all washed up, because it was all pretty dirty, went to the store and bought some cream and waited for Kaden to get home from school so he could help.

I think I got a little too excited and put too much cream in at first. Just because the jar has a line marking 4 quarts, does not mean to fill it that full with cream lol.  So I took about half the whipped cream out and finished it in batches. Much easier.  We had worn ourselves out.

Kaden and I took turns churning (Chad took a few turns too) and after  a while and some sore arms later, all our hard work had paid off and we had butter! And also a lot of buttermilk.

After I got all the buttermilk separated out from the butter, I divided it and made them into different flavors. I made chili lime, garlic and herb, Cajun, Italian herb, regular salted, and Sriracha.

I tried out the butter molds too. Although, I haven’t quite figured out the trick to these yet. The butter didn’t want to come out of them even after setting in the fridge for hours.  This is supposed to be a pineapple but it’s kind of hard to tell.

All in all, this was a fun experience to get to use something young grandparents and family members past have used. I’m not sure I’d make a habit of using the butter churn, I think I’ll retire it and find a nice spot for it as a decoration instead. I think one of these days I’ll invest in a stand mixer.