Home made butter... mmmm

So I got a ton of Heavy cream as part of a food distribution program I went to... Hmmm now what?

Then I remembered a friend telling me she made butter last time she got a bunch of cream so I said to myself OK, I can do this!

There are lots of instructions online and luckily I have my trusty KitchenAid so I knew I could handle it. Still it's a bit daunting... I mean we don't make butter we buy it right? OK I'm over it lets give it a go :)

This was my favorite tutorial that I found homemade butter from The Hungry Mouse

Here are some pictures from my adventure...

 This is what it looks like after about 10 minutes and the nice fluffy whip cream is starting to break down.

Things go pretty quickly now and it gets clumpy looking.

 Now its ready for straining...

 This is after I have strained, kneaded, and rinsed out all the buttermilk. Sorry there are no in between pictures because my hands were covered in butter :) As an extra step I put the disc of butter into some sack cloth (you could probably use cheese cloth too) and folded it over and pressed to expel any remaining buttermilk. I also did mix in a bit of salt. Probably about 1/4 of a teaspoon.

 Mmmmm...

From 1 quart of cream I got 1 3/4 cup butter and over a cup of buttermilk we will use for pancakes or baking. I measured 1 cup into my handy dandy measure all cup and have a nicely measures cylinder to go into the freezer and wait until I need some butter for baking. If the heat ever breaks I will make some muffins and cookies .

So the ingredients I used were...
1 quart of heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon salt

handy tools:
A good stand mixer
a fine mesh strainer
flour sack cloth ( cheese cloth would probably work too)