Hi! 

So, in my country for some reason unsalted butter is still hard to get in low prices. Usually, for 250 grams of unsalted butter I have to pay 1,59€!! That's more than 5€ a Kilo!! 

And since I use it a lot to make SMB, cakes, cookies, cupcakes, etc, I was wondering: do you think that I could use homemade butter? Would it still be the same? Or would it change the results? Has anyone tried it before? 

I have a good recipe, that I use to make butter sometimes (for fun...I'm a freak xD) and 1 L of Heavy Cream gives me +/- 500 grams of butter. And since 1 L of Heavy Cream costs me 2,25€ I think it would make a huge difference on my prices and my costumers would be happier (even more because homemade butter it is all natural and stuff).

So, any thoughts? :) 

Thank you in advance!!

i think it sounds like a great idea-- the only time i've made butter is when i've accidentally overwhipped my whipped cream -- you'll have to come back and say how it works for you -- i mean if it's more economical -- why not -- test it out first --

best to you

AWell, OP, have you tested? I'm curious. I'd imagine if you rinse all the buttermilk out, and pat the butter dry, the butter you make would have to contain less water than what you buy. Therefore a stiffer SMBC? I dunno. I don't have a reason like you, to try. On that note, how is cream available where you are from? I've made butter for fun, in the past, as well. If I'd want less of a flavor, I'd use ultra pasteurized. I'd pick this for making SMBC. But mostly I want more butter flavor, I got local from the farmers market. Homogenized, and probably pasteurized, but definitely not the ultra type. And I cultured it with plain yogurt overnight.

AI've had stray thoughts about this as well, would love to hear about the economy of money and time. Butter has doubled in price in two years. :(

AExperiment and let us know! It's high here too. Chocolate will be extraordinarily expensive soon too. :(

AI made butter in a big ass Hobart once. Pounds and pounds of it, at a homeless shelter I volunteered at. Heavy cream was donated by the case one day, and well...not much to do with it, so I got to play. :)

OP, I see that other countries also complain about the cost of ingredients.  We see such cheap prices coming out of USA and UK and wonder why we can't enjoy such ourselves. (sad face)  

It appears that Portugal's price of butter it is comparable with what we pay in Australia.  If I convert your Euro to Australian Dollars I get a fair comparison.  Our cheapest butter is EURO 2,30 (very ordinary quality) up to EURO 3,43 for good quality Danish butter 250 grams.

I think it would be awesome to make your own butter, I am a really big fan on making from scratch.  It may taste superior, and if so, then an excellent idea.  But are you really saving anything?  .

So, you are saying that it costs you Euro 3,18 to buy 500grams butter but buying enough cream to make 500g butter will cost you Euro 2,25.  I am curious, how much money worth of your labour and electricity etc does it take you to make butter?  Is it worth saving the Euro 0,93.  It may be, I don't know, only you can answer that.

Also, will saving Euro 0,93 really make a big difference on your prices for customers?

What is the final price of your cake - say a standard 8" single tier covered in fondant?  In Australia, it would be 124 Euro at the cheapest, so the cost of butter in a typical cake with SMBC is only 2.2% of the sale price. Will buying slightly cheaper ingredients really make a huge difference on the final price to your customer?  It would not here in Australia, as the ingredients are the cheapest, cakes boards, boxes, electricity etc, add significantly, but the real big cost is labour - about 66% of the final sale price.

I would be interested to know what % butter cost is to your final sale price in Portugal.

AI agree, with the numbers you quote I can't see a big different in price making your own butter, especially considering other costs including electricity and the big one, labour!

In Australia, our biggest cost is definitely labour. I'm always gob-smacked to hear what people can sell an 8 inch round cake (for example) for in the US - I couldn't even buy ingredients for some of the prices on these threads - and that's even ignoring the crazy low-ball prices....

hi! 

So I tryied it and it works just fine :D ( Sorry no pictures, I totally forgot! :( ). 1 Lt of cream gave me 496gr of butter. 

About the price: 1 kg of unsalted butter here is almost impossible to buy. So I have to buy 250gr at the time. I like using good quality ingredients because they make a difference on the taste (specially on the SMB). For 1 kg of unsalted butter (cheap one) I pay 6,36€ and I have no extra work to get it. With this experience I paid 2,25€ for a Litro of good heavy cream, it took me 20 minutes to make (with the mixer so no work there) and another 15 minutes in the frigde to get to the cold consistency of butter. For the cost I made: 2,25 *1,23 = 2,77€ 

The 1,23 is the estimated cost of the electricity (23% of the cost). So I can say I paid 2,77€ for 496gr of unsalted butter, saving 0,41 €. Is it worth it? Well, maybe not enough, but now I know that when I can't find butter I have an option, and it's a good one too. 

About your question Magic Mouthfuls: a 8'' single tier covered in fondant in my area of Portugal would cost 40, the costs here are not low so they would represent almost 50 % of the final price and the butter would be 5,85% of the final price.

125 euro for a 8''? I wish people here would be fine with those prices! Unfortunately, even though the Cake Design is growing here, people are not yet used to pay a lot for they cakes, so if we do those prices, 60 % of the clients would go buy a "normal" cake in a pastry shop. :/ 

Well, hope this post helps someone  ;)