Bread and Butter

No, I don't mean that figuratively, I really do want to write about bread and butter.

After Christmas and the New Year, I was left with a pint of double cream that we had not got round to opening for various reasons, much as I adore cream and indeed most fats, I was not going to eat a pint of double cream by myself so I decided to make butter with it.
It isn't difficult, simply put the cram into the food processor and beat as if you were whipping cream and then got interrupted at the point when it is whipped and left it to go very stiff. At this point add a cup of cold water and beat again until the butterfat separates from the buttermilk and it looks like this:

Pour off the buttermilk into a bowl and beat a little more, before turning the remaining lump of butter out on to a chopping board. It is then necessary to work the butter with a pair of wooden spatulas or spoons to get the remaining water out. You can buy specialist 'butter hands' which probably do the job much better but if you only make butter occasionally it isn't worth it.

After a few minutes squeezing and rolling, it looks like this:

Now is the time to add salt if you want, and work that evenly into the butter. 

So there you have a nice piece of butter ( I checked out of interest and it weighed 9 oz), and a bowl of buttermilk, which is obviously calling out to be made into soda bread or possibly buttermilk scones.

On this occasion it was soda bread:

It didn't stay like this for long, a few minutes later it looked more like this: