{Project: Everything Tastes Better with Butter}

Full sensory learning has staying power and what better place in your house to engage all those senses than the kitchen! 

This weekend’s cooking endeavor was pretzels with homemade butter. Lucas has been obsessed with LuCk Dough lately so I thought it would be the perfect time to get those little hands into pretzel dough.  Playing with dough, whether its for play or edible, is a great way to develop those fine motor skills. Pretzel dough is a little tougher than play dough, so it has all those little muscles working extra hard. Cooking in the kitchen is quite the workout for those little ones!

After we popped the pretzels in the oven, we took out the Kitchen Aid to make some fresh butter! Originally my plan was to shake the heavy cream in a jar, but after looking online and realizing it was going to take 15 to 20 minutes of shaking we went with Plan B. Butter in a jar will have to wait until Lucas is a little older and we recruit a bunch of helpers. 

Pro Tip: Make sure you remember to use the splash guard on the Kitchen Aid (unless you want to redecorate your kitchen walls with buttermilk)

Lucas loves to add things to the mixer and turn it on, but he lost interest after the heavy cream turned to whipped cream. It took about 10 minutes to separate into butter and buttermilk. I strained the butter in a cheesecloth and Lucas came back to help squeeze out the excess whey. He was, not surprisingly, way more interested in the end result than he was the butter-making process. 

The fresh butter on the warm pretzels was absolutely divine! Now I am wondering what to do with this leftover buttermilk…

Pretzel Recipe

• Dissolve 1 package of yeast in 1 1/2 cups warm water.
• Add 1 tsp salt, 1 Tbls sugar and 4 cups of flour (we used 2 cups white, 2 cups whole wheat. Next time I may try 3 cups whole wheat, 1 cup white)
• Mix and knead the dough until smooth. 
• We chose to roll our pretzels into snakes and worms but you can make any shape you’d like! 
• Lay the pretzels on a cookie sheet, brush with a beaten egg and sprinkle with salt.
• Bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown