Do-It-Yourself Dairy

You and your students can make your own butter, sour cream, ice cream and smoothies. Your students will love these activities, which can be done at school or home.

Do-It-Yourself Butter

This recipe makes 200 g of butter.

What you will need

  • A clean container with a screw-on lid (a container that will hold about 500 ml of liquid).
  • 2 cups Australian cream (45% milk fat)

Instructions

Making butter is so easy that your students are not going to believe it. However, their arms are going to get very tired, so this activity is best done in pairs.

  1. Put the cream into the container and screw the lid on tight.
  2. All that is needed now is to 'shake! shake! shake!' for about 12 minutes. Your students might like to shake to their favourite CD.
  3. When about 12 minutes is up, carefully remove the lid of the container. Students should find that their cream has turned into butter, surrounded by a liquid called buttermilk.

Remove the butter from the container and it is ready to spread on bread or biscuits.

Do-It-Yourself Ice Cream

What you will need

  • 2 tablespoons of sugar
  • Ice
  • 1 cup of milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
  • 6 tablespoons of rock salt
  • A small plastic zip-lock bag
  • A large plastic zip-lock bag

Instructions

  1. Half fill the large plastic zip-lock bag with ice. Add rock salt and seal.
  2. Pour the sugar, milk and vanilla essence into the small zip-lock bag and seal.
  3. Place the small bag into the large bag and seal.
  4. Shake the bags for five to seven minutes.
  5. Open the small zip-lock bag and enjoy.

Do-It-Yourself Sour Cream

This recipe makes 300 ml of sour cream.

What you will need

  • A mixing bowl
  • 1 1/4 cups Australian cream (35% milk fat)
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Mix the cream and the lemon juice together in a bowl and then stand it in a warm (but not hot) place for about an hour.
  2. Put it in your refrigerator until it is cold and then it will be ready to use.

Make sure you use your sour cream before the use-by date of the cream with which you made it. Great on baked potato!

Do-It-Yourself Strawberry Smoothie

What you will need

  • 100 ml water
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 1 1/2 cups vanilla yogurt
  • Strawberries
  • Mango ice cream or frozen yogurt
  • Dash of honey

Instructions

 

  1. Blend strawberries and water in the blender.
  2. Pour into a large glass (quarter fill the glass).
  3. Pour the remainder of the blended strawberries into a bowl, to be used for another smoothie.
  4. Combine milk, vanilla yogurt and a dash of honey and then blend.
  5. Pour into the glass and add a scoop of mango ice cream or frozen yogurt.
  6. Place a strawberry on the lip of the glass to garnish.

Of course, you could replace the strawberries with banana or mango.

Now go to Curriculum Material.