Okay, so it's school holidays and I felt the urge to make butter having read every body else raving about TMX butter!
On my first attempt, I used Bulla pure cream. This is the only "pure cream" I could get at our local shops and it costs over $3 for 200mls. The cream "broke" very quickly and didn't seem to produce much buttermilk at all before it got incorporated and re-whipped in tothe butter again . . . so I ended up with "whipped butter" rather than real butter and no buttermilk . . . very disappointing
I used this on pancakes and in some cooking and then scraped the rest into the chook bucket!!
Anyway, I waded my way through the hundreds of butter posts on the forum and found people have successfully used ordinary (thickened or whipping) cream so bought some homebrand for $1.94 for 300 ml. Tried again and the result was perfect . . . I read Katherine's comments that she doesn't save the buttermilk from thickened cream due to the thickeners etc, but I kind of felt that that's the cream we usually use when we have cream, so I did use it.
It was disappointing to have additives etc, when part of my objective was to have a totally natural product,but I couldn't see myself outlaying that kind of money again when shop butter costs so much less. But the butter DID taste great and as I rarely eat butter, usually only have it in the house for cooking and baking for the kids (I use a reduced fat spread- -I know, additives-- ormore often no butter at all) I have to hold myself back from spreading it on everything horizontal!!
As Judydawn has pointed out, I don't think making my own butter will be very economical, so probably won't make it too often, but it's good to know
I can !!
