Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After reading all of the 5-star reviews on the Sur la Table website, I went straight to the store to pick up one of these gems as well as grabbing a quart of whipping cream. I know you can shake cream in a jar and get butter, but the design of this butter maker is genius. The outside of the jar has markings for how much cream to use. One cup of cream is the maximum and when I was finished, found that I had exactly filled the 1/4 cup ramekin base. There are two removable portions, both the lid and the ramekin base unscrew, allowing you easy access for scraping out the bits of butter and also for cleaning. Rubber seals on both ends prevent leakage. The top of the "jar" is not just an opening. It has an attached plastic "strainer," which seems to capture the bits of butter as you pour off both the buttermilk and also as you rinse your butter a couple of times in cold water. While I found that a large glob of butter formed and sat in the ramekin base, a small rubber spatula would be all that you need to ensure that you have scraped every last wonderful bit of butter from the sides of the jar. For my first time, I chose to stir in about 1/4 tsp. of salt, but there are "directions" (I use the term loosely) for making honey butter (stir in 1 Tbsp. of honey) or garlic butter (stir in 3 to 4 cloves of smashed roasted garlic). I can definitely see some fresh herb butter in our future as well. Not counting the 6 to 8 hours the cream needs to warm on your counter, it took me all of about 5 minutes to make something that everyone at our dinner table raved about when served with a loaf of no-knead bread, which also took me about 5 minutes to make. Sometimes the simplest things like homemade bread and butter are the best things. I anticipate a lot of buttermilk pancakes and muffins in our future. It is a vicious cycle...make the butter, save the buttermilk, make some pancakes, which then require some fresh butter, which in turn creates more buttermilk...My biggest suggestion would be to start researching recipes that use buttermilk before you start, because you don't want to just pour that flavour-filled liquid down the drain!