can i make homemade butter in a stand mixer?

I'm just seeing this and just wanted to add a recipe. Tyler Florence makes an orange honey butter in a food processor that is out of this world (and super easy)! He then includes a recipe for scones that you make with the buttermilk. Really, really good... Try the butter on homeade biscuits, panckes, waffles.. or just your finger.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/berry-scones-with-orange-honey-butter-recipe/index.html

i had my chilled butter on good artisan bread tonight. not that great. i will retry next week with a different brand cream.

thanks chasey. i was gone all day yesterday and haven't had a chance to taste my chilled butter yet. will do that in the next few minutes. as i suspected there must be a taste improvement-otherwise, why do this repeatedly...

hmmm... well i put mine in the fridge right after making it because i was baking bread for it. I think that the butter has to be cold so you can appreciate the sweetness. That could be totally in my head but my husband agreed. in his defense he's a really good husband so I don't know if he was just trying to be sweet but he seemed to enjoy it.

okay, i made my butter today! so easy in the food processor. but it doesn't have much flavor... i used a pint of organic valley heavy cream that i bought last night. i haven't tried salting it yet as i was cooking dinner at the same time. BUT i ate it on corn on the cob and salted that and wasn't impressed. i can make it into honey butter and still use it but darn...

i'll try another brand of cream next week and see if that works better. i'm not giving up.

i have a cup of buttermilk left and so i guess tomorrow i'll make bread of some kind.

it should have an impressive flavor, shouldn't it (the butter i mean)?

Thanks! Me too! = ) I'm so grateful for this foodpickle thing. Its genius.

Chasey, I can't thank you enough for posting this question. I have learned a lot.

WithinSeason, what a gorgeous idea. I make skin care and natural spa products for work and when pressing scent and essence from a plant or flower that was how it was traditionally done. Plant on an animal fat. It binds beautifully. In one case making fragrant solid perfume in another making fragrant floral butter for cookies. LOVE that. Mandy Aftel would SO eat your cookies. = )

Also - you can approach the 'washing' step as a boon rather than a step to skip. My butter usually takes 3-4 washes. For the last wash, you can use things like salted water -- or even better, something like rose water! -- to flavor your butter subtly. The rose water (diluted, obv) wash makes for great shortcrust/shortbread baking.

If you make shortbread or something, you'll probably find that the homemade butter is going to work differently (because it typically has more water left behind in it). This works to your advantage with shortbread or shortcrust pastry. You may not need to add any water all.

I've really gotten to enjoy making butter at home recently (started getting weekly orders of raw cream, and butter is the easiest way to use up the leftovers).

I highly recommend using the Cuisinart / food processor -- it works brilliantly, and, is in my opinion the easiest to clean afterward. Mixer blades are harder to get the butter off of -- and your hands are going to be slippery slippery slippery. They call it butterfingers for a reason.

I posted my go at it a while back -- you can see the steps here if you like http://withinseason.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/butter/

Oh - and don't throw that buttermilk down the drain! You should press out as much as you can before the washing step. It won't yield a whole ton, but it's so worth keeping. (1 cup of raw heavy cream, yielded 4 oz. butter and a tbpn or so of buttermilk.)

oh, i must try this! i only have a hand mixer but i'll try it with a food processor. i love, love, love good butter!

MCD2... I did the same thing! making it in a food processor is waaaay easier. In the recipe they mention that you can save the buttermilk if you like. It wont taste the same as cultured store bought buttermilk unless you age your cream first. If you make the butter in a food processor you will see... you get to this point where the liquid begins to separate from the solids. I had to stop the machine a couple of times to pour out the buttermilk. otherwise is splashes around and while i do have a splash guard its hardly sufficient to keep my kitchen from looking like a buttermilk hurricane swirled through.

this is interesting to me. i havent made butter since about fourth grade when we shook a jar full of cream to make butter at school. don't you want to save the buttermilk? real buttermilk is hard to purchase anywhere-wouldn't it be a plus to get that out of the process too. if it is "washed off" doesn't the buttermilk go down the drain?

Just seeing this! I've made butter oodles of times with that recipe from cookingforengineers. It's great!! If you do it again and try to knead it in ice water, it's messy but really easy. Sounds like the paper towels worked too. You definitely want to get the buttermilk out. My best success has been when I started with heavy cream that was left out on the counter for a couple days. Oh, and definitely stay away from the ultra-pasteurized. It's almost impossible to get to a good butter stage. I taught a bread making class earlier this year and while the bread was rising, we made our own butter to spread on the bread when it came out of the oven. So good!

Chasey, thank you for letting us know what you did. Now I will try it your way. Seems like you made the recipe simpler, more doable. Wow, thank you! My next cooking project is to figure out the difference between ultra pasteurized, pasteurized and raw. Have read that ultra pasteurized does not work for making cheese, butter etc. and it makes sense to me.

Ok. That recipe from www.cookingforengineers.com is AWESOME. I didn't 'wash' the butter. I just kept emptying out the buttermilk that kept forming. Once the butter had coagulated i flattened the small batch of butter between paper towel sheets. This might be completely unkosher, but it worked like a charm. I saw one recipe that suggested an old dishrag or cheesecloth. Thank you for all of your help. x

Thank you very much for all of the guidance and support and reminders. Will let you know how it goes. x

It will all work out. Just think of it as a science experiment. Trust your instincts. I followed this recipe and it worked beautifully. Use the highest fat content cream you can find.

Yes, I read that part. For some reason it makes me nervous! I was hoping for any pointers from someone who had done it before. I guess washing butter seems a tad odd to me. But maybe I just have to do it and risk messing up. So it goes. And yes, i am aware that water is polar and cream non polar and will not mix. It just didn't completely add up in my head but when does it really.

Here's what they say at the article you were referred to:
The butter should be washed to remove as much of the butter milk as possible. This can be done by placing the butter in a bowl with cold water and kneading the butter. When the water discolors, pour it out and more cold water. Not washing the butter will result in butter that my go rancid because of the buttermilk.

Why thank you SKK. I have a feeling I will. = ) And thank you again for the recipe. Just read it. Looks gorgeous. Quick question... On the step where you 'wash the butter off in cold water' how did you do that?

Have fun. By the way, you will love your vita-mix when you get it!

Wow. thank you... so much! I'm trying to get the link to come up but there was / is a recent post on the William Sonoma blog for several different kinds of butter. I can't wait to try the recipe you posted. Thanks!

Yes you can make butter in a stand mixer. Here is the how-to. It was great fun when I did it. http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/113/Making-Butter