Butter and Tortillas

Want to make a fun snack? How about making your own tortilla and slathering it with homemade butter? Here’s how:

BUTTER:

Butter only needs one ingredient: heavy whipping cream. You will also need a glass jar with a tight lid. You can use a clean, dry baby jar, or a canning jar with a lid and ring.

No matter what size jar you use, only fill it up halfway with the cream.

Tighten the lid securely and start to shake it as hard as you can for as long as you can. It might take over ten minutes to separate into butter and buttermilk (the liquid left over), so it helps to have some friends over so you can trade off shaking. Maybe set a timer and challenge your friends make up silly words to a song while you shake, shake, shake. Dancing helps!

It might not look like anything is happening for a while, but soon enough you will see a lump forming in the liquid. Keep shaking until there is a clear separation of butter and liquid.

Once the separation has happened, pour off the liquid (or save it for another recipe that calls for buttermilk, like biscuits!). You can mush in a little salt to the butter, so it has more taste.

Now it’s time to make tortillas!

TORTILLA:

Ingredients:

2 cups masa harina (a special corn flour)

½ tsp. salt

1 ¼ cups warm water

In a medium bowl, stir the masa and salt together. Then pour the warm water in and stir until it is mixed and smooth. Cover your dough with plastic wrap and set it aside for about 30 minutes.

Take the dough and divide it into 12 pieces and roll them into balls.

This part needs someone who is safe to use and supervise the stove.

Heat a cast iron skillet until it is very hot. Take one dough ball at a time and flatten it out with your hands, pressing the heel of your hand in a circle so the dough looks like a tortilla.

Cook them one at a time for 1 to 2 minutes on each side. The edges should be a little brown. Do this one by one, keeping the warm tortillas folded in a cotton dish towel.