Butter

I've been making my own butter lately and there are many reasons why you should do the same... you will know there are no dyes or additives in your butter, it tastes great and melts beautifully, with butter comes buttermilk, it's a good conversation starter. But perhaps the best reason to make your own is that it is very easy. You just need a couple of tools: heavy cream, a food processor, a bowl (it's easier to pour off the buttermilk if you use a bowl with a spout) and a nice firm spatula (the one I use is all one piece, which I find more sanitary than the rubber on wooden handle variety).

Pour the cream into the work bowl of a food processor and let it go. First, it will become whipped cream.

And then the cream will "break" and begin to separate into fat globs and liquid

How do you know the food processor stage is done? Use your ears. Making butter this way, I have found, is a delightful auditory experience. The whipped cream makes one sound, which changes as the cream breaks and the globs start to coalesce. Once the globs have mostly come together, the sound stops changing and the butter spins around either as one giant blob, or it stops spinning and hunkers down in one section of the work bowl. Dump the butter and buttermilk into your spouty bowl and it should look like this:

Pour off the liquid and then knead the butter with your spatula, pouring off liquid as needed until liquid stops appearing as you knead. I usually add a little salt around this time.

Once the kneading is done, I form the butter into cylinders, which makes it easy to store, weigh and cut off small bits as needed. To shape it, I dump a blob into the center of a piece of wax paper, fold the paper over the blob and with the help of cookie sheet, push the blob inside the paper to form a cylinder, like so (this method also works well for cookie dough)...

I twist the ends to seal the cylinders and any that are headed for the freezer get wrapped in tin foil. Now you have little Christmas crackers full of homemade butter and a container full of homemade buttermilk. What could possibly be better?

- Team Hollywood