Learn how to make homemade butter in a mason jar!
Do you know how to make butter in a jar?? It is one of my favorite activities to do with my kids! The butter tastes fresh and delicious, and it is so easy to do!
Homemade butter is a fun pioneer activity to teach kids about how life was in the 1800s. We have also made it for our Thanksgiving dinner! It was so fun for my kids to serve their very own butter at the table.
I had a container of heavy whipping cream sitting in my fridge for a few weeks. I kept looking at it, knowing I needed to do something with it, but never knowing exactly what! My sister finally suggested to me that I should use the cream to make butter in a jar with my kids. Best idea ever!
Making butter in a jar is so so easy, cheap, and my kids absolutely LOVED it!
It was so fun watching my kids shaking their jars and checking every 5 minutes to see if the butter had formed. My daughter even said, “Wow! They use to have to work hard in the olden days! I can’t imagine doing this every time we needed butter.” This led into such a great discussion about the conveniences we have now and how hard our ancestors had to work in order to survive.
How To Make Butter In a Jar
All you need to make your own butter is a mason jar and a carton of heavy whipping cream. Seriously, that’s it! I told you this was easy!
To make your butter you will need to pour some whipping cream into your mason jar. I filled our jars about half full, but if you are doing this with your kids, or for the first time, I would recommend only filling it about 1/4 full. It just makes the process easier and quicker for the kids if the jar has less cream in it.
Once you have your whipping cream in the jar, put the lid back on, and screw it tight.
Now, all you have to do is shake the jar! Shake, shake and shake! The amount of shaking the butter will need will depend on how much cream you put in the jar. The more cream, the longer you will need to shake.
When we did it today it took us about 45 minutes of hard shaking. If I had done less cream I’m sure it would’ve been much quicker.
You can make the shaking part fun. We turned on some music and danced around while shaking our jars. If you are only making one jar of butter you can have everybody take turns shaking it for 2 minutes and then switching to the next person.
As you shake your jar you will notice the cream will slowly become thicker. After a while the butter will begin separating from the cream. Keep shaking until the butter forms together in a nice solid ball. Once this happens, you are done! See, so easy!
Drain the leftover cream, rinse your butter, and then transfer it to a plate. Wah-lah! You have made butter!
Now is the fun part! You get to enjoy your butter on some fresh bread or rolls. I am so excited for you! This butter is delicious!

Butter in a Jar
Ingredients
- Heavy whipping cream
- Mason jar
Instructions
- Pour heavy whipping cream into your mason jar. Fill it between 1/4-1/2 full. The fuller it is, the longer the butter will take to make.
- Screw lid onto mason jar to secure a tight fit.
- Shake jar vigorously for 15-45 minutes (the more cream, the longer you will need to shake).
- Once butter has separated from the cream and formed a ball, you are done.
- Take butter ball out of jar and lightly rinse with water.
- Enjoy on your favorite bread, rolls, or muffins!
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