Food Fun Friday: Making Butter With Kids

I am always trying to find food that my kids will eat consistently. They are very hit or miss with things. One day they will clean something off their plates and the next day they won't touch it. Lately, I have a had a hard time getting to eat bread whether in a sandwich or as a piece of toast with breakfast. When I was grocery shopping the other day I noticed the cream in the dairy section and had the idea to get some and try my hand at making butter with kids. I have made butter in the past when I was teaching. My students always enjoyed the process and the results. I was hoping my kids would too.You will need:

• Jar or container with a tight fitting lid
• Heavy cream
• Salt (optional)

Making homemade butter is pretty simple. You can use a glass container, but with little kids helping I highly recommend a plastic container like the one above. Just make sure the lid is on securely before giving it to your kids.

Pour some cream into your container and add some salt if you like the taste of salted butter. How much cream you use depends on the size of your container and how much butter you'd like to make.

Tightly close your container and give it too your child to shake. It will take about 7-10 minutes of shaking before the butter forms so your kids will want to take turns shaking. I am going to be honest here - you will do most of the shaking yourself. You'll get a terrific arm workout which is great because you'll be eating some butter later.

My youngest shakes it up!

This is how the cream will look after 7-10 minutes of shaking. At this point you will be left with liquid that has separated from the butter. Drain the liquid off and stir your butter. It's ready to sample!

We tried our butter on some bread. You can refrigerate the leftover butter as you would with store bought butter.

What was the verdict with the kids? They liked it! They actually could not wait to try it. I think the fact that they saw how it was made and they helped create it, had them really invested in eating the bread with butter. My husband was also very impressed when he came home from work. He's a pretty easy guy to impress. Try making butter with kids and let me know how it goes!