The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook

You can learn about butter and buttermilk and find unique recipes for using buttermilk. Buttermilk is not just for waffles- it’s for smoothies, and French toast, and cornbread and soup!

The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook by Diane St. Clair

The author of this endearing 200+page book lives on an animal farm in Vermont; she shares her techniques and explains all about butter and buttermilk production.

Diane tells about learning to love buttermilk while staying with her grandparents. With them they used buttermilk liberally and she learned to love to drink it because its goodness was all wrapped up in good warm memories of those summers.

Later in her life she owned a farm, and cows and a dairy. She is the real deal in Vermont. She separates the cream from the top of the milk, and pasteurizes the cream, cools it, adds a lactic acid culture and over the course of 24 hours the lactic acid does it magic and clabbers (sours) the cream. This cream is crème fraîche, and is ready to be churned. With the churning process the milk fats are joined to become butter and the water-based portion of the cream is the buttermilk.

She shares the process for making butter and buttermilk at home. Additionally she shares how some folklore of buttermilk remedies that throughout history have been used to fight a myriad of ailments:

1. Heatstroke – drink a large glass of buttermilk before going in the sun to prevent heat stroke on a hot day.
2. Canker sores – hold a mouthful of buttermilk against the sore several times a day.
3. Sweating – reduce excessive sweating over the course of several months by drinking a glass of buttermilk a day.
She states that she doesn’t advise or recommend these “cures” but shares them antidotically.

This book is liberally dotted with excellent photography. You will see step-by-step color photos of techniques and also beautiful black and white photos of the farm, farm machinery and animals.

Recipe Chapters: (and my favorites per chapter)
The basics of buttermilk
Breakfasts – spicy carrot cake muffins
Soups - beet, orange and buttermilk soup
Salads and dressings – buttermilk curry dressing
Breads- brown soda bread
Main dishes – buttermilk béchamel pizza
Sides – buttermilk scalloped potatoes
Cakes and pies – orange cupcakes with buttermilk frosting
Desserts – zesty lime sandwich cookiesand buttermilk fudge

Metric conversions and equivalents are in the appendix for those who need them.


Note: This book was from my personal library.

Buy The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from a Small Vermont Dairy from Amazon. I loved this book.

Whenever I make buttermilk biscuits I use Home-X Biscuit and Cookie Cutters - Set of 11 available on Amazon. It's so fun to make round or square biscuits depending on the meal.