Making Butter in a Baby Food Jar

Originally posted April 11, 2015

If I had known how fun this homeschool activity would be, I would have done this much earlier in the year! Yesterday, during my sons’ homeschool videos, I had them make butter. I put some heavy whipping cream and some real whipped cream into four baby food jars and had my boys shake away!

My second boy was the best at it. He shook his own jar, two of his brothers’ jars, and also my mason jar. It took us about an hour and a half to make all the butter. Our first jar of butter took about 35 minutes.

This is the butter still in whipping cream form.

After some shaking, the mixture starts to thicken and pull away from the sides of the jar.

The butter is still in the “scrambled egg” stage here. It still needs a little more shaking!

Now the butter really looks like a “butterball.” It was really neat to watch it go from the scrambled egg stage to this stage. Time to drain our butter!

I am planning on using the liquid in the measuring cup to make drop scones.

This batch of butter is from the mason jar.

I used a cheesecloth set in a colander set in a large measuring cup. I think you are supposed to squeeze as much liquid out of the butter as possible but these were so little that I didn’t do that. Three of our bits of butter are gone already so I am glad I didn’t go to the extra effort.

We had buttered toast for our snack yesterday and my kids loved it! I think we will do this again just for the fun of making our own butter. I am not sure how long butter made this way will keep but if we only make them in small batches, I am pretty sure our homemade butter will always be gone before it can spoil!

Update: I have made my own butter quite a few times since April! Sometimes in a mason jar and sometimes in the KitchenAid mixer. The KitchenAid mixer is definitely the easiest way; it seems to take no time at all to whip up butter using it! We currently have three kinds of butter sitting in our fridge – chocolate butter, garlic onion butter, and honey whipped butter (which did not turn out quite like I wanted). All three were made from storebought butter since I am currently experimenting with different flavors of butter. We do have a half gallon of heavy whipping cream sitting in the fridge that I may end up using to make butter though!

-Lynn