Butter

I started making my own butter around the same time that I started getting milk delivery, which, by the way, may be the greatest thing in the history of time. Every Wednesday I open up the cooler that sits next to my front door and pull out three half-gallons of milk and one pint of cream. The milk is consumed by my husband over the course of the next four days (did you ever see "The Grudge II"? No? If you did then you remember the milk scene. It's like that). The cream goes straight into my Kitchen Aid mixer.

Making butter is super simple and you can trick all of your friends into thinking you're some sort of back-to-the-land Swiss Miss. It also makes for a more memorable hostess gift than a crappy bottle of wine from the Albertson's.

What you need:

Kitchen Aid or other stand mixer
1 pint cream
Plastic wrap

Pour the cream into the mixing bowl and fasten the whisk attachment. Wrap the mixer around the bowl in plastic wrap — you want it covered so that when you turn on the mixer the cream doesn't go splashing all over your kitchen counter. Turn the mixer on medium. The cream will whip up (you may have to push it down a few times), then turn the consistency of frozen Cool Whip. Keep going until the cream turns more yellow and separates into pebbles. Around this time the buttermilk, which will have separated from the butter solids, will start splashing up against the plastic wrap. Turn the mixer off and take out the bowl.

Strain the buttermilk from the butter and use it for pancakes. This isn't cultured buttermilk, it's the real deal — thin and kind of watery, but subtle and great for coffee. Now scoop up the butter solids and knead them, squeezing out all of the extra liquid. This is my favorite part. It's a kind of creepy (we don't usually handle big chunks of fat), kind of soothing (you get to handle big chunks of fat!) tactile sensation.

Add the liquid that came out of the butter to the buttermilk you already collected. Now you can salt the butter to taste or leave it alone. Wrap it up and stick it in the fridge. This should have given you about 1 cup of butter and made you feel like a home ec champ.