Cooking with kids of all ages can be enjoyable with easy recipes for children. The best cooking recipes for kids are no-bake recipes that are simple and yield fast results. One of the easiest and fastest recipes for kids is making butter. Get children cooking with recipes that teach how to the make butter, salted butter, herbed butter and honey butter.
Make Homemade Butter in a Jar
There are only a few items necessary to make butter. These items include heavy whipping cream, a jar with a screw-on lid and a couple of marbles. It is possible to make butter without marbles, but if they are available, they are a great addition because kids can hear the cream changing to whipped cream and then butter.
Those are the only ingredients necessary to make unsalted butter. To make salted butter, herbed butter or honey butter, gather additional items like salt, dried or fresh herbs – such as parsley, chives, oregano, thyme or rosemary – and honey. Remember that honey contains small amounts of botulism and should not be fed to children younger than 1 year old, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Making Butter With Kids
When making homemade butter with kids it is best to focus on making a small quantity so the results will be apparent quickly. Start by filling a jar with a screw-on lid two-thirds full of heavy whipping cream. Baby food jars, empty and clean peanut butter jars or plastic Ziploc containers with screw-on lids are all good choices. Mason jars work as well but using a large glass jar could cause a hazard if the kids drop the jar when they are vigorously shaking.
Adding salt will not affect how quickly the butter forms so this can be done before beginning to make the butter. The amount of salt to cream depends on taste but a generous sprinkling is good for most small batches. For larger batches of butter, use roughly 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon of salt per cup of cream. Herbs or honey are added after the butter has formed to make honey butter or herbed butter.
How to Make Butter
There are very few steps to making homemade butter in a jar. Place the cream and the salt in the jar, screw on the lid and shake. At first, the marbles will rattle around the container as it is shaken. The cream will begin to thicken slightly and the sound the marbles make may change slightly. Whipped cream with soft peaks begins to form. Next, the cream will thicken more and the marbles may not rattle any longer. Keep shaking the container. Suddenly, the cream will separate into butter and buttermilk and the marbles will rattle around once more if they are not trapped inside the butter. That’s all there is to it.
Once the butter has separated, pour off the buttermilk. This can be refrigerated and used to make pancakes later. Fill the container with water and gently press a fork against the butter to release the remainder of the buttermilk. Rinse the butter several times to remove all the buttermilk and prevent it from becoming rancid. The butter is now finished and is ready to eat, flavor or refrigerate.
Tips for Cooking With Kids
When making butter with kids, it is very tempting to open the container at every stage and check on the butter. This is great fun and can help the kids see how the cream is changing. At first the cream will be smooth and soft, then it will become slightly stiffer. Right before it changes to buttermilk and butter it will look lumpy or curdled. Finally, the butter will be separate from the now liquid buttermilk.
Parents who open the container at every stage will want to carefully wipe the lid and rim of the jar to prevent cream from leaking when the kids go back to shaking it. There are fun ways to pass the time while shaking the cream:
- Pass the jar around to different family members so everyone gets a turn.
- Have the child count to a certain number while shaking the jar before passing it on.
- Have each member of the family say the alphabet when it is their turn to shake.
Keep in mind it is best to use smaller amounts of cream to get to the butter phase more quickly.
Making Homemade Honey Butter
After the butter is rinsed it has a soft feel to it. This is the perfect time to add herbs or honey to make honey butter. A rough guideline is to add about 2 teaspoons of honey to what started as 1 cup of cream. Add a little at a time and mix thoroughly then adjust to taste. Pour off any water or buttermilk that appears after mixing the honey and butter together. The honey butter can be spread on French toast, bread or biscuits.
Teaching kids how to make butter is easy. Get children cooking with simple recipes like salted butter, herbed butter and honey butter. Experiment by adding different herbs or spices to the butter to make homemade butter for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and other holidays.
To read more about children’s cooking, read Best Snow Recipes for the Winter Holidays. For other activities for kids, read Rainy Day Activities and Crafts Kids Love or Construction Paper Wall Hanging for the Holidays.
Genna Cockerham - Genna Cockerham has been writing online since November 2008. She served as Marriage Feature Writer from December 2008 to February ...
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