We looked at our forest leader Polly very cynically when she said we were going to make some butter round the campfire. But make some butter we did indeed do!
We poured a carton of double cream in a Tupperware container (half a carton will do) and added in six glass marbles. After making sure the lid was firmly shut, we then started shaking the tub pretty vigorously. After just a few minutes the cream had been whipped by the marbles and it was very thick. Next up was the super hard bit. As the cream thickened, the marbles got stuck in it and were hard to move. We had to do a single, sudden shake to move the marbles from one end of the tub to the other and then repeat the other way. And then repeat, and repeat….
After what felt like ages (but was probably only about 10 minutes) we could feel the cream suddenly start to move around a lot more freely. On opening up the tub, you could see the butter milk was separating out and the cream was becoming yellower and more butter like. After another 10 minutes of shaking, we drained off the remaining milk to reveal proper yellow butter. We decanted this into a bowl and squeezed another bowl on top of it to drain more milk away. Then it was the easy bit – just eating it! All in all, it took about 30 minutes of shaking so definitely something to do with several people to help.
The verdict from us was that it tasted like Premier Inn butter and was surprisingly “normal” considering how we’d made it; we were all very impressed. It went down a treat on our usual toast made on the fire. It was great fun to do but not necessarily something you’d want to do every week unless you’re super fit. It’s definitely a good way to keep warm though!
