Frozen cream for butter?

Hi,

I'm just curious, does anyone use frozen cream when making butter?

I am guessing it would need to be heated to work. I just don't get enough cream from my goat milk to make butter. And I don't want to buy cream for the project.

So, can I freeze what cream I get, let it add up for a while (a month at most) and then use it? With some fresh cream added I'm thinking.

Any input would be appreciated.

Lisa

No responses. So I guess I will just have to experiment a bit. For this round I just skimmed the cream. No separator for me - too expensive.

When I had about 1 pint I bought 1 pint of heavy cream. Of course I then mixed the two together and then divided it into two quart jars. After that I put one in the fridge to work with later.

The other I let reach about 60 degrees. At that point I dug out and clean up my immersion mixer.

I used that to bring the cream to the consistency of soft set pudding or whipped topping. At that point I put the lid on the jar and started shaking the jar.

I shook the jar until the butter had separated from the liquid. The one was an almost a solid mass and the other was almost like water for thickness. Please note I was not shaking the jar very fast nor very hard. Just steadily.

Once I started the mixer until the butter separated took about 20 minutes.

After that I got the jelly strainer out - clean of course - and poured the contents of the jar through the jelly strainer.

I got as much of the liquid out as I could. I'm still trying various ways for that.

At that point I transferred the butter to my silicon muffin cups. It took 2 of them and each muffin cup holds about a 1/2 cup if it is filled and level.

For now the butter is sitting in my fridge. When it is hard I will transfer most of it to freezer bags and freeze it for future use.

Once everything was through to the muffin cup stage I went through the same process with the next quart jar.

Btw, the jars were only 1/2 full once I divided the cream. The contents need room to expand through this process.

I'll just have to see where things go from here.

I didn't see your original post - wouldn't have been able to give you a good answer anyway! But, I'm really glad I found this one. Thanks for doing the experimenting - sounds like it worked out pretty well.

Interesting process, we tried making butter last year. We drained off the liquid and then washed the butter with cold water to help solidify the butter.

We noticed that we had to use the butter pretty quick to keep it from going bad.

frustratedearthmother, that was the basic process from last spring and summer. I'm just hoping to get away from using the whipping cream that I bought this time. Don't get me wrong, I like the results. I just wanted to try only goat cream.

Hens and Roos, that's one reason I freeze most of what I make. I didn't have to buy store butter all last year from what I made last summer.

I rinsed in cold water too, I forgot to list that step. But, I found that I would get more liquid out as I pressed the butter into the muffin cups. From what I've read - the more liquid, the faster it spoils.

As for the process, it is a variation of using a mixer like a co-worker does. I just don't have bowl style mixer anymore and my hand mixers just don't give me a result I like. Something about the end texture.... My elbow keeps me from being able to use my actual churn as well as the "just shake the jar" process. So, I combined the processes to see what happens.

Since I don't have any more cream now the experimenting will start. I plan to collect the cream like I did but freeze the cream in a jar after it is collected for the first pint. The second pint I will collect and leave in the fridge each day (unless that takes longer than a week). When I have two pints I will thaw the frozen cream and follow last summer's process.

I'll just have to see if it will work.

It will be interesting to see what the results are.

Keep us posted, we haven't taken the cream off this year yet- just too much going on right now.

That's interesting since the butter in the grocery store lasts forever, even on the counter I have never had a stick of butter go bad. Now you have me wondering how they do that.

I was thinking the same thing... I don't even refrigerate my butter once it's opened for use... Even the flies don't bother it (though I do keep it in a covered container).

Because it's pasteurized.

I'm sure pasteurization has a lot to do with it. But so does the amount of liquid still in the finished product.

Last year I noticed that when I was pressing the butter into my muffin cup molds...if I took the time to start again when a layer of buttermilk showed up then the end result is smoother and more like what is found in the stores. If I don't take that time to start the pressing again the end product is more crumbly and goes bad faster.

If I'm remembering correctly butter that goes bad is referred to as going rancid.

I'm afraid I tend to read a lot about what I want to do before I try it.