“I love butter and they always say you hurt the ones you love,” said Columbus native Zach Briggs as he vigorously shook his mason jar of whipping cream at the “Only Love Beats Butter” seminar at the North Market.

The event was on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon in the Dispatch Kitchen of the market.

Warren Taylor, dairy technologist and CEO of Snowville Creamery in Pomeroy, Ohio, hosted the butter-making class.

Snowville provides milk and cream to Jeni’s Ice Cream shops in Columbus and prides itself on bottling its milk from grass-fed cows, producing what it says is higher quality milk.

Forty guests attended the class and for many, it was their first time making butter.

“I’m excited about teaching these courses so you all can have fresh dairy products at home,” Taylor said. “There is nothing like fresh butter.”

Taylor’s butter-making process is relatively simple. Pour, whip, drain and voila: fluffy butter. The only ingredient needed is whipping cream.

Snowville whipping cream and products were used for the class.

Whipping cream is composed of water, milk and fat, Taylor said. Whipping the cream adds air to the concoction that allows water to enter inside the fat. This separates the milk and fat, creating buttermilk and butter.  

Taylor showed guests how to whip in three different ways: whipping by hand with a mason jar, whipping more traditionally with an electric butter churner (“like your Grandma,” Taylor joked) and whipping with a modern-day KitchenAid mixer.

About 15 guests interested in whipping by hand brought their own mason jars. Taylor offered sour cream and sweet cream options for guests to whip with, and filled a third of the jar with their selected cream. Sweet cream was the biggest hit.

Whipping by hand took some nearly an hour to turn the cream into a buttery texture, while others were still shaking their jars out the door when the class was over.

Briggs said he found the best way to whip the cream was to “try to abuse it” and “slosh” it against the ends of the jar.

The electric butter churner held the most whipping cream in its old-fashioned large glass barrel. The cream took about 20 minutes to thicken.

The KitchenAid mixer took just 10 minutes for the whipping cream to stiffen.

Once thickened, Taylor poured the substances into a colander to drain the buttermilk from the butter.

He broke a sweat at this point, struggling to pour the glass barrel, which held what he said would be enough butter for a year for an average family, into the colander.

With his hands, he repeatedly squeezed out any remaining milk from the fluffy butter mold and then placed the finished product on parchment paper.

Taylor said the more milk taken out of the butter, the longer it will last refrigerated.

He offered samples of the butter to guests and allowed people to scrape butter off the mixer with their finger.  

“Take home however much you want,” he said.

The patrons took his invitation to heart.

“I have never been to a place where it is OK to eat butter with a spoon in public,” Columbus native Lelia Caty said. “I’m going to take as much as I can take out of here.”