There’s nothing Squeaks and I like more than a big pancake breakfast!

Squeaks likes his with lots of strawberries and whipped cream, and I love mine with tons of maple syrup, but there’s one tasty topping we both can’t get enough of: homemade butter! Here’s our recipe, with a dash of science, so you can make your own butter, too!

All you need to get started is a big glass jar, some heavy whipping cream, and a grown up to help out. First, fill your jar halfway up with cream. Then screw the lid on really tight… And shake the jar!

And keep on shaking it! Just be careful not to drop the jar. You might have to shake for a long time, like 20 minutes, or even longer.

But eventually, you’ll stop feeling the liquid sloshing around. If you look inside, you’ll see that your cream is now more like whipped cream. That means you’re almost there!

Keep shaking until you feel a solid lump bouncing around in the jar. Open it up, and if it looks like this, your butter is done! So, we made ourselves a tasty treat!

But how does plain old cream turn into butter? Well, it all starts with milk! You might already know that milk comes from a cow.

And when the milk first comes out of the cow, it has a lot of fat in it. Animals use fat for energy and other important jobs, and milk has lots of it to help the cow’s baby calves grow healthy and strong. If you let the milk sit for a few minutes after it comes out of the cow, the fat will float to the top.

Then, farmers can separate that fat from the rest of the milk. That extra-fatty liquid is what we call cream! When you pour cream into a jar and shake it, the little bits of fat in the cream start to bump into each other and stick together.

That’s why the cream starts to get thicker and thicker — those bigger clumps of fat don’t slosh around as much. Eventually, the fat all collects into a big solid lump and separates completely from the liquid. The lump becomes what we call butter, and the liquid is called buttermilk, which you can also use to cook things like pancakes and biscuits!

There are lots of other ways to make cream into butter, like with a butter churn, a mixer, or even in giant spinning machines in factories, but they’re all doing pretty much the same thing that you’re doing when you shake up your jar. Once you’re a butter-making expert, you can add salt or other flavors to your butter, too! Okay Squeaks, our butter is ready!

Now let’s get to the kitchen and dig in! Thanks for joining us today! Do you have any questions about the science behind your favorite foods?

If you do, ask a grownup to help you to leave us a comment down below, or to send an email to Kids@SciShow.com!