Goat Butter

 Cream forms this rubbery white band. It always fascinates me that milk has this unique protein that is rubbery.

This is out of the cone shaped metal area that separates cream from milk in a milk separator. This is casein and it gives you that squeak in squeaky cheese.

During the beginning of my folk's stay, I didn't separate milk. I figured I'd have time after they left but the stay went on and on. I hated wasting all that cream so I separated and kept it in the freezer.

The trick to keep the quart canning jars from breaking was to refrigerate them until they were really cold plus leaving lots of head space, an inch and a half of no cream at the top. Then the next day the jars went into the freezer.

With five quarts waiting to be made into butter, I got out the blender today and set to work.

I know, I know, I use to do this with my butter churn but I've got the flu today and not much is getting done. The churn works great but it works me, so I've found if I freeze my cream and then let it thaw to where there is a soft lump still partially frozen in the middle, it makes great whip cream and butter in the blender. Where as before my blender heated up the cream too much and I'd hit the whip cream stage and then go back to the cream stage.  

With heavy cream that has gone through the separator once in the milk stage and then the resulting cream put once more through the machine I get a heavy, heavy cream. I do have to frequently stop the machine and scrape the whipped cream down toward the blades. Yes, my cream is that thick.

Now I have to perfect my problem with the final product being too warm and the water not rinsing out well. I'm going to have to freeze some ice cubes to thoroughly chill my water that I rinse the butter with.

You see, we rarely use ice cubes around here.

Once I get that down, I want to try culturing the cream and seeing if I like butter made from it better than my plain ole style.

Have anyone of you tried it? What was your opinion?

Now the folks are in my sister's care, I can now get back to learning to cook with goat butter. To make it a little more convenient, I lay a piece of plastic wrap on my kitchen scale zeroing it out, then I plop on freshly made butter to a quarter pound, just like in the store packages. I wrap the butter up and freeze for later use. This way I can cook with it or make some more ghee to can. I'm cooking with it quite a lot lately.