'I made my own butter to keep costs down but I was surprised by how much it set me back'

With the price of countless household items rocketing, we’re all now looking out for ways and means to keep costs down. And with news of the price of butter increasing, naturally I thought ‘sod that, I’ll just make my own then’.

It’s worth noting that of all the things you can make yourself in the kitchen, butter is absolutely one of the easiest. I’ve made it before, and it’s a complete doddle. So it was away to Morrisons to buy a tub of double cream, 600ml to be precise, for £2.10. In my head, that would produce a similar weight of butter, and I’d be quids in.

All that money saved from butter expenditure can be syphoned into our rocketing monthly energy costs, I thought. It’s perhaps not a lot, but it helps. So anyway, here’s how it went…

The kit…

To make butter, all you need is your pre-bought 600ml of double cream, a large mixing bowl, a smaller mixing bowl, an electric whisk, a sieve, some salt, a piece of greaseproof paper and a clean tea towel or a piece of muslin. So in all likelihood, you will have most of this, and if not, you can borrow some of the other bits, meaning the overheads are immediately low.

The method…

First, pour your cream into the bowl, fix your whisking things (technical term) into your mixer, and beat. I recall my mum always warning me when she got me to whip cream to be careful, because ‘whip it too much, and you’ve got butter’. So obviously, this is all extremely liberating. I got at it at full speed.

I zipped past soft peaks and then powered into stiff peaks in a blur, probably about three minutes or so. At which point, the cream starts to look a lot like scrambled eggs. Or barf. Then nothing happens for a bit. Well, you think nothing’s happening, but actually, science says otherwise.

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