Kids Food Revolution by Niamh Cooper, Melissa Byrne & Gillian Hegarty
Did you know you can make real butter just by shaking a jam jar? You don’t need any fancy equipment, and you don’t need special ingredients. Just cream, a clean jam jar, and your best shaking skills. And once you’ve made your butter, you’ll have leftover buttermilk just waiting to go into a loaf of beautiful brown bread. These two recipes are made for each other, and together they make one of the most satisfying things you can eat: warm, fresh bread spread with butter you made yourself.
The Kids’ Food Revolution is a West Cork initiative working with schools to run cooking and gardening workshops. The children in Barryroe N.S. and the Gaelscoil Clonakilty had great fun recently, making their own butter, using paddles which were on loan from the butter museum!
Recipe 1:
Make Your Own Butter
Ingredients
• Heavy cream (double cream works best)
Method: Fill a clean jam jar one-third full with cream. Seal the lid tightly.
Take turns shaking the jar. First the cream will turn to whipped cream. Keep going!
Eventually a yellow lump (butter) will separate from the liquid (buttermilk).
Pour off the buttermilk and save it. You’ll need it for the brown bread.
Note: The buttermilk needs to sit for at least three days before it sours and you can use it.
Remove the butter from the jar and place it in a bowl of cold water.
Knead gently to remove as much of the buttermilk as possible. This helps the butter keep fresh for longer.
Add salt for flavour, and to help preserve your butter.
Roll into balls or shape into a rectangle and wrap in parchment paper.
Recipe 2:
Easy Peasy Brown Bread
Ingredients
• 225g / 8oz brown flour
• 225g / 8oz white flour
• 1 level tsp bread soda
• 1 level tsp salt
• 1 egg
• Buttermilk, to bring the wet mix to 500ml / <1 pint
• Seeds
• Oil, for the tin
Method: Preheat the oven to 230°C / 210°C fan. Oil a loaf tin.
Place the brown flour in a bowl. Sieve in the white flour, bread soda and salt. Stir well.
Crack the egg into a jug and whisk with a fork. Pour in enough buttermilk to bring the total to just under 1 pint / 500ml.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until combined. Be sure not to overwork it.
Pour into the prepared tin and scatter seeds on top.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce to 200°C for a further 45 minutes.
Remove from the tin and return to the oven for a final 5 minutes.
Place on a wire rack and leave to cool fully before cutting.
Enjoy!
Did you know?
Brown bread has been a staple in Irish homes for generations.
At peak of milling, there were 7000 flour mills in operation across Ireland – and they were all water-powered.
There is only one industrial flour mill left in Ireland, in Portarlington. It’s run by Odlums.
Eating brown bread is so good for you, because brown flour is a slow release carbohydrate, which makes your energy last much longer.
Brown bread uses bread soda / bicarbonate of soda, which reacts with the acidity in the buttermilk. All it needs then is heat to make it rise, resulting in a delicious loaf.
You can add all sorts of things to your brown bread, such as seeds or dried fruit. Seeds add crunch, healthy fats and extra goodness. Dried fruit like raisins, dates or apricots are packed with iron, fibre and natural energy. Best of all, your kitchen will smell absolutely incredible while the bread bakes in the oven.
Here is something you might not know: At its peak in the 19th century, Cork was the largest exporter of butter in the world, bigger than any city in Europe or America. At the height of butter production in Ireland, 30 million pounds of butter were exported from Cork every year, travelling by ship to the West Indies, America, Brazil and Australia. In 1835 alone, one third of all butter exported from Ireland left through the Port of Cork. The Cork Butter Exchange, established in 1769, became the place where the global price for butter was set, a bit like a stock exchange. You can discover the whole story at the Cork Butter Museum – well worth a visit! www.thebuttermuseum.com
