In a fit of needing to do something tactile and domestic, I made butter this morning. I picked up the tiny container of 生クリーム (fresh cream) at the store yesterday with a fleeting "maybe I'll finally try this" thought.

I recently caught a tutorial on instagram that made it look so easy, so it's been in the back of my mind. Actually, before I moved to Japan, I would frequent antique stores and come across treasures like wooden butter molds and presses, among a myriad of other extremely specific kitchen tools, which I'm sure would get anyone's intrigue going. No? Just me?

No specific tools for me though, just an electric whisk and rubber spatula. From pouring the cream into the tall mixing cup, to pouring off the separated buttermilk after sufficient whisking, the whole process took about 10 minutes. If you've ever made whipped cream by hand, it's exactly like that except it takes twice as long, and your arm may tire like mine did if you don't have the luxury of a stand mixer.

Actually, I was largely interested in trying to make butter because it is notoriously expensive in Japanese grocery stores. Maybe I could buy a litter of cream in bulk to save some money on our grocery bill, I originally thought to myself. This would be great, but I found that anything over 200ml is hard to come by. What's more, 200ml of fresh cream was around 500 yen, which is about the same cost as the 200g package of Hokkaido butter I tend to buy. Regretfully I didn't measure, but 200ml of cream didn't make 200g of butter. If I had to guess, maybe 120g?*

So economically maybe not so helpful, but the result is absolutely delicious and I have the bonus of having real buttermilk on hand to use in pancakes, etc. Note to self, I should check Costco for fresh cream and the price of butter next time I'm in Sendai.

*The internet tells me it would take 300g of cream to yield 200g butter.