Shaking Butter

I have always loved Laura Ingalls Wilder and when I saw the idea of making butter in the Toddler Activity Book it instantly reminded me of that! Add that to the fact that I recently inherited my Dad's old bread machine and had a hankering for some thick, white, bread-machine bread with butter and we got today's activity! Anything that shakes and makes noise Miss V loves so I got her set up with a plastic container and a marble to practice shaking.

The marble helps the butter to "churn" while shaking

Does this come out? If so maybe I'll put it in my mouth and give Mom a heart attack...

After some good shaking-the-marble fun I confiscated the container and added 1 cup of whipping cream and then taped the lid on extra tight.

Dad showed V how to shake it again and she was not at all ready for that; first order of business was seeing if she could get the tape off...

She was also a bit annoyed that she didn't get any of what she thought was "milk" that was poured in this container...

Once she gave up on the tape she forcefully shook the container for about 3.4 seconds and then handed it to Mom who continued shaking for approximately 15 more minutes (where did Dad disappear to??) until it thickened up a bit and we got the finished buttery product. 

This seems like a lot of work...

Bread please! 

It looked like cool whip and was very creamy; pretty different than the usual butter from the tub :)  It also didn't have much of a taste and I immediately started thinking of flavors or things to add next time like cinnamon or honey or garlic depending on what it is going on. I'm hungry for more bread!! 

V enjoyed it...mostly. She loves ketchup all of a sudden so anything sauce-like she wants to lick off food which is kinda gross! She tried it with ranch dressing on a piece of lettuce a few days ago and the butter I think reminded her of yogurt. She licked some of it off and ate some of the bread that didn't have any butter. She also doesn't really like bread so I was surprised she even ate any of that! You can't be a Becker without enjoying some bread/carbs with every meal!