A Quick & Easy Butter-Making Activity For Kids
If you’re here because you want to learn how to make some homemade butter, great! Butter-making is a great activity for homesteaders, or just a great farm activity with the kids. Before the days of homogenization, your milk and cream would separate in the bottle. Since the cream is lighter than the milk, it would rise to the top in a thick delicious layer. In dairy processing plants, this cream is scooped off the top and sold separately as heavy cream or whipping cream. Well, butter is also made from this cream. It takes the cream from about two and a half gallons of milk to produce one pound of butter.
Different types of dairy cows produce milk with differing amounts of butterfat content. There are several breeds of dairy cows in upstate New York including, Guernseys, Short Horns, Brown Swiss, and Ayrshires, but by far the two most popular breeds in my neck of the woods are Holsteins and Jerseys.
The Holsteins are popular because of the sheer volume of milk that they produce, and the Jerseys produce milk with the highest fat content. This high fat content makes it perfect for cheese, heavy cream, and butter-making. The more butterfat milk contains, the more butter it will make.
The Science Behind Butter-Making
The science involved in the process of butter-making is simple. There are fat molecules that are suspended in the milk liquid. We will agitate this liquid briskly to cause the fat molecules to collide with each other and eventually stick together. This agitation causes more air to be pushed into the milk and cream mixture.
This foamy mixture is whipped cream, but we will continue shaking the mixture which will push the air back out again. The mixture will start to clump up until there is one big clump of butter and some milky, buttery liquid. When we remove the butter, the liquid can be processed into buttermilk.
Buttermilk is another dairy product that is largely used in baking. You may have heard of buttermilk pancakes, muffins, doughnuts, or biscuits. My Grandmother used to make buttermilk biscuits and I will never forget them.
Here is the simple butter-making process….
Materials Needed
Heavy whipping cream, at room temperature
Salt (optional)
Jar (pint-sized for little hands…quart sized for larger hands)
Procedure
1.Fill container ½-⅔ full with heavy whipping cream. Leave room for the liquid to bang against the sides of the jar.
2. Firmly secure the lid. I prefer screw-on jar lids.
3. Shake the container energetically for 5-10 minutes or until a ball of butter forms in the jar (This will differ depending upon the the size of the jar and quantity of whipping cream). Continue shaking until the butter is a solid ball in the jar.
4. Pour off the liquid but save it. (This is buttermilk and is great for baking)
5. Shake for 5 more minutes and drain off any liquid (this should be clear liquid at this point).
6. Roll the butter ball out onto plastic wrap.
7. Wrap the butter completely and form into your own shape (you can make a ball or get creative!).
8. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
9. Enjoy with your dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow morning!
Conclusion
Butter-making is not very difficult, and it’s a lot of fun! If you have kids, you might as well get some use out of all of that youthful energy, and it’s a great lesson in agriculture. These kids may never be farmers, but they will be consumers and voting citizens one day. Let’s teach them now where their food comes from. Hope you enjoy your butter making experience.
Thank you for spending some time with me.
Love, Peace, and Light.
Terry has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. He has taught in the New York State School system for 18 years, where he teaches Career and Financial Management, Agricultural Business, Marketing and Distribution, Sports Management, Wildlife Conservation Management, and Resort and Recreation Management. His time has also been spent as an FFA advisor for 12 years and has been farming his 100-acre family farm since 1991. Terry has a deep love of all types of agriculture and takes every opportunity to promote agricultural education.
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