Making butter from raw cream is slightly different than using store bought heavy whipping cream. It turns to butter more slowly, doesn’t clump as easily, and takes more time and effort.
Let me walk you through my experience.
New to the raw milk journey
This past fall, I started purchasing raw milk from a family in our homeschool co-op. It has only recently become legal to sell raw milk in the state of Iowa, so finding raw milk is still a bit of a goldmine.
Their jersey cow produces almost a pint of cream per half gallon of milk, so i’m getting a LOT of raw cream (which I”m ok with).
I have many recipes that use heavy cream which I make with regularity, so using up cream is not a concern to me.
Coffee. Alfredo Sauce. Whipped Cream. Butter. Etc.
I had collected some cream off the top of our milk using a small ladle. The cream isn’t super thick, but does separate out well after about 24 hours in the fridge.
My First Attempt at Raw Butter from Raw Cream
It was a normal weekday and I told myself (and the kids) that I was just going to make a quick batch of butter and we’d be back at school work. I’ve made butter from cream MANY MANY times. I have a whole blog post about it that you can find HERE. Using store bought heavy cream it typically takes about 10 minutes to turn to butter.
I went into this endeavor with great optimism and emerged from the trenches exhausted and defeated an HOUR later.
Here’s how it went….
The Story of the Trenches
I placed my cold cream into the bowl of my stand mixer and fitted it with the whisk attachment. I turned it on and watched it turn to fluffy whipped cream in just a few minutes. So far. So good.
However, after a little while longer my cream went back flat, almost like thick milk. I kept whipping.
Ten minutes passed.
Twenty minutes passed.
What on earth is going on? It’s not even starting to look grainy yet?
I get on my phone and start texting a friend of mine who also purchases milk from the same farmer. She said she had made butter and that it took hers 35-40 minutes! This was a shock to me. Because like I said, I’m used to the 10 minute version.
According to her Amish friend it usually takes at least a half an hour because it doen’t have the same additives as store cream.
Half an Hour
I keep whipping. It’s been a half an hour and I can see grains (I think), but nothing really seems to be making butter. It’s not clumping and I’m getting tired of babysitting my mixer. This was not what I had planned for.
About this point I decided to give up and just put the whole mixing bowl in the fridge. I have a successful post on making butter on my blog, but I can’t even make it from raw cream!!! I felt like a fraud and a failure.
Pressing On
After about 5 minutes of the raw cream sitting the in fridge I decided I was going to see this through. I was determined to make butter!
I put everything back onto my mixer, and continued. After about an hour i was clear their were small clumps but they weren’t going to congregate. I decided to cut my losses and see if it was possible to salvage this mess.
I poured the entire mixture through my fine mesh strainer and collected as much of the fat as I could. I then pressed the butter together by hand into a grany textuered ball and began to rinse out the buttermilk.
Butter at Last
I finally did get a small lump of butter from that batch, but it was NOT worth it. If I couldn’t find a better way to make butter from this raw cream it just wasn’t gonna happen.
The next week at co-op I talked with the farmer and she said she spends 45-50 minutes with her hand mixer making butter. Now that’s dedication! I have a whole new respect for the pioneers who made butter without motorized appliances. It must have taken FOREVER!!
Making Butter from Raw Cream using an Immersion Blender
Since my previous expereinces with making butter had been either by hand or using my stand mixer, I decided to try an immersion blender instead. My hope was that it would speed up the process, and thankfully, it did.
I took a wide mouth pint mason jar about 4/5ths full of raw cream and began running my immersion blender up and down in the jar.
I was a bit concerned that I might have issues with the cream sloshing out, or over flowing when it fluffed up during the whipped cream stage, but I didn’t. The volume of the mixture stayed relativly the same throughout the whole process.
Whipped Cream Stage
One it reached whipped cream I did have to break from occasionally to transfer any cream that had gotten above my blender head back to the bottom of the jar.
It wasn’t the smoothest process, and I think if I had a slightly wider jar (or the blender cup that came with my blender) it would have going better. As it was the head of my blender wasn’t much smaller than the diameter of the jar.
This continued through the grainy stages, but eventually….
Butter from Raw Cream!
After about 12 minutes of blending with the immersion blender the butter separated out and I was left with a lump of butter. Hallelujah.
Twelve minutes is sooooo much better than an hour, and not much more than what I was used to.
If you’re struggling to get your raw cream to butter, consider trying this method.
Why did it work?
While I can’t say for sure, I think the smaller size of the mason jar forced the butter globules to bind to eachother much more efficiently that when they were sloshing around in the big bowl.
I also wonder if perhaps I hadn’t strained off the first attempt as well, and some milk was also mixed in with the cream. The higher fat content in the milk, and the higher concentration of fat in your liquid will all affect how easily butter is made. I have more about the science behind butter making in my How to Make Butter from Heavy Cream post if you want to learn more.
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