Butter making is popular with those who love the sweet taste of a freshly made butter.

Betty Sons, who sells fresh butter at the Mountain View Farmers’ Market, said the process starts with milking the cows and then skimming the cream off the top of the milk.

“You have sweet cream butter, which is fresh, and then there is a tart, acidic butter, which occurs when you leave it in the milk,” explained Sons. “It acidifies, so you don’t have the sweetness.”

Sons advised saving up the cream for a day or two if you only have a cow or two to milk, so that you will have enough to make a nice portion of butter.

“Once you’ve skimmed the cream off the milk, then you place the cream in an electric church, if you have one, and let it do the hard work,” said Sons.

Don’t have an electric churn? Get ready to use your arm muscles. Place the cream in a jar and begin to shake it.

“You will shake, shake, shake, but oh, that’s the long process,” groaned Sons.

With the electric churn, it will take approximately 20 to 25 minutes to make butter. By hand, it will take longer.

Once you see butter present, you will form it into a ball.

“You form it into a ball to remove it from the buttermilk,” explained Betty. “Then, you get cold, cold water.”

Use the cold water to rinse the butter.

“When you are doing butter, they say to wait until it gets to room temperature. But we’ve found out, if you wait until it gets to room temperature, it won’t make a solid ball,” said Betty. “Now that we have the butter churner, we don’t have to wait until it gets to room temperature, and it stays firmer.”

After rinsing the butter, then it’s time to knead it.

“We get all the water off that we can,” said Betty. “Then, we sprinkle it lightly with a pinch of salt.”

Fresh butter needs to be used fairly quickly.

“You either need to eat it within a week or freeze it,” said Betty. “It will keep longer in the fridge, but it will lose its quality.”

Old-time sweet snack

“When we were little, Mom would take the leftover biscuits from breakfast, spread fresh butter on them and sprinkle with sugar. That’s was our dessert,” recalled Freda DePriest.

Easy caramel

Betty’s husband, Jimmy, shares his simple recipe for caramel.

“Take a can of sweetened condensed milk, remove the label and clean the can. Then, put it in with a pot of beans when you’re cooking beans,” said Jimmy. “Cook the can with a pot of beans for about three hours. Remove it, place it in the fridge and let it cool overnight. Now you have to make sure not to let the water cook down. It has to be covered with water, or the can will blow,” warned Jimmy, who has had clean up the sticky mess from an exploded can.