I was immensely excited for this month’s blog post to come to fruition. When I started researching the cream I would need to use in New Zealand, Kate reminded me about Wangapeka, a brilliant dairy producer near Nelson that had couriered down clotted cream for my baby shower which she lovingly organised.
A quick phone call to them saw that we had 3L of ‘Pouring’ cream winging its way to Dunedin, ready to be turned into delicious butter.
Initially I wanted to use ‘double cream’, but the good folks at Wangapeka explained that due to where the cows were in their milking cycles, the fat content of the cream was very high, meaning their pouring cream would be perfect for creating a decent butter yield. Sure enough, the next day there was a chilled package on my desk, which contained my 3L of cream. The cream was beautifully cold, so I allowed it warm slightly on the side while I set to sterilising the two mixing bowls I needed make the butter. I also had 2 bowls of ice water and muslin on hand to help eliminate all the remaining butter milk from the butter once it was made.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I tried to get the cream out of the bottle. It was so thick that I had to cut off the top of the bottle off and spoon the cream into the mixing bowl. I tried some of the cream left over in the bottle – It was heavenly, it had a delicious sweetness to it which I was looking forward to seeing if the butter retained.
The first butter I made was the truffle butter. I really enjoyed watching the machine mix the cream into thick cream, before seeing it break down into massive chunks of butter and butter milk. It was interesting to hear the change in sounds coming from the machine too – the sudden thunking (is thunking a word? It is definitely a sound!) of the butter and sloshing of the butter milk was a brilliant signal that I had been successful.
The whole process was actually very quick. Although it does require your input (squeezing and washing the butter to eliminate at much butter milk as possible) but once the butter is made it is ready to eat!
I then set to use up the three small bottles of butter milk – the bi-product of my butter making. I made the vanilla buttermilk into these beautiful scones, absolutely delicious and easy to make; they also made sure nothing from my butter making experiment went to waste.