So tonight, My mom and I decided to try our hand at making sour cream and butter. Alittle Background first would be helpful, huh??!!

     In October of '05, the weekend after Will and I were married my mom and I took a cheesemaking class in Ashfield, MA from a lady named Ricki Carroll. She seemed pretty cool. Her house was very eclectic and amlost "hippie" like, for a lack of a better word. The house was an old victorian that hand many colors on all the different designs outside. Anyway, back to the class. Turns out Ricki Carroll is pretty famous in the cheesemaking world. She has a couple books out that most cheesemakers have, and sells all the supplies you need on a website, www.cheesemaking.com . That day we learned to make ricotta, mozzarella, and a couple others, I forget, my mom would know better. But anyways, since then we have be just waiting to try our hands at it. So, we had ordered all our supplies from her and were waiting on our cheese press to really get started and it came alittle while ago so we started today!!

     She did the sourcream and I made the butter. The sourcream was super easy. All you do is heat the Light cream or Half and Half to 86 degrees. Then add the Sour cream culture and leave to sit in a Yogortherm, (Thermos) for 12 hours and then refrigerate and use. I will update this tommorow and let you know how it was. 

      The butter was SUPER easy!! We put one pint of room temperture, about 72 degrees, into a blender and blended on the 'dressing' setting for about 10 mins until it seperated into Butter fat and Buttermilk. I saved the buttermilk for pancakes and took the butter fat and 'washed' it. Pretty much washing it in cold water and washing until the water ran free of the buttermilk. Then I put it in a small 'I can't believe it's not butter" container. I let it chill for about 10 mins to harden and and then made a slice of toast. It tasted the same as store bought butter. I didnt add any cheese salt because we never buy salted butter anyway so i figured why start now. I will make the pancakes in the morning to see how that tastes.

     So, Anyway, this is our first start at this. Im thinking the butter might not be worth making though. It cost 4.00 for the pint and you only get the small tub of butter out of it. Oh, well, i'll have to look into that more.

     So, In November we are having a small family reunion here with my moms side of the family and we have decided to do a pig roast so I have to look up a place to get a pig decide on a menu and show it to my parents. Well, I let you know how everything goes.  SB

10/15/2007 - Great Job!

Posted by Frank (the infamous!) Great stories! I enjoy reading them. Looks like the butter and cream worked out. Glad to see you guys enjoying life on the farm. I still want to see how john is going to handle the frozen water buckets in the winter! Keep em off the pond ice!

John, I never made it up in the plane this year. The Pitts Special doesnt have heat so we are hangering it in the next week or 2. Next year I'll make it a point so we can take some aerials of your property.

Good job keeping up on the site Susan! I'll be curious to see the snow pics shortly.

Regards, guys! Permanent Link