Homemade Butter Recipe

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Every time I take a tiny step towards self-sufficiency I feel great satisfaction and pride.  This week my daughter and I made our own butter.  True, we didn't milk a cow, let the cream rise, and use an antique butter churn.  We simply bought heavy cream at the grocery store and shook it in a mason jar. Nevertheless my smile was as wide as the soup bowl on the dinner table that night.  We slathered that butter on artisan bread and dunked it in the soup I made in the crock pot.  Simple pleasure.  Next time we will get raw milk from a local farm and try it from scratch (being that we don't have a milk cow of our own...). Here's how we did it.

You will need:
A pint of heavy whipping cream
A quart sized mason jar 
Perseverance

Method:
Pour the pint of cream into the mason jar and close the lid tightly.  Shake vigorously until the contents separate into butter and buttermilk.  I've been told this takes about 10 minutes, but it took us closer to 30.  You will see the cream thicken almost immediately and then all of a sudden you will have a mass of butter and liquid.  Pour the liquid off (our cats went crazy for it), replace the cap, and keep shaking.  Again, pour the liquid off so all you have is butter in the jar.  Add a little (about 1/2 cup very cold water to the jar and shake again.  Pour off the water, scoop out the butter, and voila!  Of course you will want to refrigerate it.

Farm Table: Healthy Granola Cookies

"Cookie" is a word that makes all toddlers pay attention. (More so than the word "no"...Hard to believe, I know.) Heck, even my ears perk up at the sound of "cookie", and that's good enough for me.  My niece, who also has a toddler at home, shared her idea for healthy cookies (thank you Anne!) that are made from kitchen staples:  peanut butter, bananas, oats, and raisins.  In fact, that's her entire recipe: Mix these four

ingredients together and bake for 15 minutes.  So today my daughter and I got out the mixing bowl and did just that.  We poured spoonfuls of peanut butter into a bowl and added one mashed banana, a handful of raisins (the size of my hand, not hers), and some oats.  We tossed in some pecans just for fun.  We mixed it all together with a wooden spoon until it seemed like the right consistency.  Then I patted little lumps of dough into cookie shapes and placed them onto a cookie sheet.  Fifteen minutes later, viola!  Healthy cookies!

Our first attempt did turn out a little dry (nothing a glass of milk couldn't cure).  I'm considering adding a smidge or two of applesauce next time to see if this helps.  And I'm thinking of all kinds of other ingredients that could be added or substituted:  craisins, carob chips, semi-sweet chocolate chips, honey, apples, blueberries, pears, and the list goes on.  You don't even have to be adventurous in the kitchen to bake these cookies into a satisfying snack!  So try it and let me know what ingredients you used.  We can compare notes here in this blog post.

These tasty treats are great for packing up and taking on our city excursions to ward off crankiness caused by crowded subway cars.  And I'm looking forward to packing some for extra energy on a long hike in the country too.
Bon apetit!