Last night my husband separated the milk from the cream using a hand separator. He started out with nine litres of milk and this produced 700 millilitres of cream, and this in turn produced about 300 grams of butter. A word of warning, though – unless you have a new separator, this can be messy, so do it in a place where mess doesn’t matter. We used our car shed, with the separator set up on a bench top.

We can still use the goats’ milk as it is skim milk, and it is delicious. In fact, I had a glass full of skim milk with my lunch today.

After separating the cream from the milk, he placed the cream into the blender with a teaspoon of salt flakes, and blended it in short bursts until it became lumpy.

Next, he took it out of the blender, and continued to beat it using an electric hand-mixer until it became quite thick. Next, he drained the buttermilk off, and placed the butter into a colander and poured very cold water over it in order to make it set. After this, he placed it onto the chopping board and used the spatula to knead it.

We now also have buttermilk to make Mixed Berry Buttermilk Muffins.

Then, he placed the completed butter into a butter container in the refrigerator to set hard. It is also a different texture to bought butter – it is sort of crumbly and harder, similar in texture, when spread, to cottage cheese.

This butter is absolutely delightful, and doesn’t leave that greasy aftertaste in your mouth that cows’ milk butter does. It is also different in taste to bought butter, but it is absolutely delicious, and there is no goaty taste to it.

All in all, making goats’ butter is incredibly simple – all that you need is a little time and patience. Would we do anything differently next time? Yes, we would place the salt in with the butter after draining the buttermilk off. You live and learn with experience!