Experiments with butter

During our time in Berlin, we took a day trip to Leipzig with our friends Marc and Petra. While there, we bought a wooden butter form with an owl on it. I was excited to try it out and thought it would be fun to try making my own butter and then putting it in the form.
I bought heavy cream from Strauss Creamery - the closest I could come to a local dairy. I started by putting it in a jar and shaking it, because I had a vague memory of doing this in kindergarten once.
Here is the jar of cream and the wooden butter form.
But the seal on the jar wasn't good, despite my addition of wax paper, and it leaked. My friend Heidi had told me to use a Mason jar, but I didn't have one on hand. So I transferred it to a bowl and took up the electric beaters. I wasn't sure if that would work, but I remembered my mom always telling me to not beat the cream too long or it would turn into butter. I took her word for it this time.
Here is the cream as whipped cream - I suppose this is when I'd get the warning from my mom.
And lo and behold, a second later curds started to appear:
A few seconds later the whole bowl was curds:

Then they started to get a pale yellow color

And whey appeared:

More whey, and the curds began clumping:
Next I smashed the butter into a lump

And drained off the whey:

Then washed it a couple times to rinse out the rest of the whey:

The finished lump of butter, before going in the fridge to chill:

While the butter chilled, I soaked the form. It needs to soak for 20 minutes in warm salt water, then 5 minutes in ice cold plain water. I weighed it down with another bowl to keep it submerged.

Last step - putting the butter in the form:

You fill the form, leaving a small mound on top so that when you invert it and squish it down on a plate, the butter fills out the spaces in the form.

To be honest, after I squished it down on the plate, I lifted the form and the butter did not emerge as planned. I got it out with a prod of the knife, but the design got a little ruined on the side. It might work better with commercial butter that is a little stiffer.

The final product:

And a close up - though you still can't see the owl detail very well with this photo:
It's a little wonky looking, but it sure does taste good! I think this was a good first start and I plan on trying it again soon. Oliver said it deserved a loaf of homemade bread, so maybe he will make us one!