There are things in this world that I absolutely love, like:

• My husband
• My friends/family
• My freedoms
• My job
• Crisp autumn air
• Leaf silhouettes
• The laughter of a child

All of those are things I can’t make or buy and I think that might also be what makes me cherish them so much.

There are other things I love, too.  I’m going to tell you about one of those things right now.

Snowville Creamery dairy products.  Snowville products come from a farm in rural Ohio where cows graze on grass rather than grain/corn and this among many other reasons you can read about make it so much more fulfilling to purchase Snowville’s milk & cream.  Another huge reason is taste.  When you put the cream or the milk side-by-side with conventional ones there’s no dispute that it simply tastes better.  You know it’s gotta be good if Jeni’s uses it in their ice creams.  It takes some getting used to having fat globules floating at the top of even a 2% carton, but that’s just because we’re conditioned to appreciate a much more highly processed milk product by the dairy mega-industry.

I’ve made quite a few things from Snowville products.  Here’s what we made recently:

Creme Fraiche

This has to be one of the simplest, most decadent of foods–and it couldn’t be simpler to make.  Pour 1 cup cultured buttermilk into a bowl with a half gallon of cream. Cover & let it sit on the counter–not the refrigerator–for 12 – 24 hrs until it thickens & reaches your preferred level of sourness.  It should be like a thin sour cream, but much more luscious on the tongue.

It pairs perfectly with fresh fruit, especially when slightly sweetened with honey or real maple syrup.

Butter

Making butter has to be one of the most fun & potentially messy things you can do in the kitchen.  Simply pour heavy cream (or creme fraiche) into a mixing bowl and whip it until it solidifies.  Sure, it can technically be more complex than that and there are things along the way to improve the overall outcome, but that’s basically it.  Oh, and hopefully you do this in a covered mixer, otherwise you’re gonna end up with buttermilk everywhere when the butter finally solidifies.  :o)  Once that happens you take your mass of butter out of the bowl and rinse it under the coldest water you can stand while kneading it to get as much buttermilk out as you can.  Now, you can shape it and wrap it in plastic wrap, then foil for freezing it.   Fat absorbs flavors easily so putting the doubly wrapped butter in an airtight container wouldn’t hurt either.

Oh, and that buttermilk that separated from the butter solids in the mixing bowl–that should go into biscuits or some other lovely dish.