Let's Make Some Butter!

When you go into your refrigerator and take the butter out, for your morning toast, did you ever notice the hardness of the butter? Do you know one of the main ingredients of butter? Have you ever made butter before? Well, today we are going to make our own butter and learn about one of the main ingredients in butter and what that ingredient does when mixed for a period of time.

Did you know that cream, when it is mixed for a period of time, will separate into butter and water? Do you think that you would prefer to make butter from cream with an electric mixer or by shaking the cream in a jar? Why?

Time to Experiment

Hypothesis: It would be easier and faster to make butter from cream by using an electric mixer, which is a machine, than by shaking the cream in a jar, by hand.

Experiment:

1. I am going to divide the class into two teams. One team will have a half pint of cream in a jar and the other team will have an electric mixer and a half pint of cream in a bowl.

2. Both teams will begin to mix their cream, either by shaking the jar or by mixing it with the mixer. I will use a stopwatch to measure the amount of time it takes each team to make their butter.

3. Once you have produced butter please say, "Butter!" and I will record the time it took for your group to make butter. The other team will continue until they have also made butter and then I will record their time when finished.

Analysis: 

1. How long did it take to make butter by shaking the cream in a jar? With an electric mixer?

2. Which method do you think required more work?

3. Was the work easier and faster with the electric mixer?

Conclusion:

*Is there an ingredient that you can think of that we could add to our butter if we wanted to eat it with biscuits this morning?*