It seems that I have burned out my blender.  We make a lot of smoothies!  Does anyone have a recommendation on a blender that is slow enough to make butter and strong enough to do smoothies?

I know a lot of people recommend a free stand mixer to make butter.  I don't have one.  I know some stand free mixers have blender attachments.  Anyone have experience with them?

Thanks in advance for your recommendations and ideas!

I honestly have no idea about butter…although I hope to soon!…but when we got another blender it was a slightly smaller model called the 'Magic Bullet'.  It works great for smoothies and is much easier to clean. 

Leah's Mom,

What kind of blenders?   We make a lot of smoothies so I need a blender first for handling frozen fruit.  However, I'd really like it to do butter too.   I'm hoping to get a blender that has speeds and not just settings as my old one had.  Mine was just too fast.  I'm looking at a KA blender on Amazon.  I'll be going to Lowes tomorrow and I'll look there too.

mamajoseph,

Thank you!  I look forward to the report!

I won't be getting a stand alone mixer anytime soon.  We just don't have the room.  Plus, if I can find a blender to do butter and smoothies then I'm set.  I like mixing my cookies, cakes, muffins and bread by hand so I don't know how much I'd use the mixer beyond butter.  Now a food processor might be a different story, but they usually don't hold liquid very well.

Sarah Grace: Yes, you can make butter in the Osterizer 16 speed 8 button blender with glass jar. (I got it for doing smoothies, mostly, so I can safely say it works great for that.) I learned a lot doing butter in the blender vs/ the KA stand mixer this morning.

1) You have to keep scraping/tending when you make butter in a blender vs. the KA which I just switch on and leave.

2) You shouldn't use a silicone spatula with a removable head for scraping down the sides. Yes, the blender was off, but the head got stuck on a blade and I was left with just the handle in my hand. I had to stick my hand in all that cream/almost butter to retrieve the scraping part. And it was STUCK on the blade! Like stabbed, pierced!

3) Butter is a great hand cream.

4) I hate cleaning my blender and am almost ready to sell it, cause I use a stick blender for smoothies now. It's easier to clean.

5) A lot of my kitchen methods revolve around reducing the number of dishes I have to wash. By hand. Which is a chore I really dislike.

6) My KA stand mixer is still one of my favorite/most used appliances and I am so glad I have it!

7) I love being a part of this community and hope I was able to help you! That makes it all worthwhile.

I think my spatula survived. It was my attitude that suffered the most damage. Hope you find want you want!

Whaledancer, thanks for the link to the report. Now it seems a lot of us will just have to start longing for a KA blender to go with our KA mixers we all have or want. 

I have an Osterizer, it has a big 14 on it so guess that means 14 speeds but I honestly see no difference. My old blender on my old Oster stand mixer, I often used to blend yogurt cream cheese. This stand alone mixer seems to turn my drained yogurt into a herb and yogurt smoothie.

My mom had an old blender that she was able to use to make grated potatoes for potato pancakes. I'd love to be able to do that but this blender makes potato smoothies, as well.

I am lacking a food processor. There is no space for it in my kitchen.

Mamajoseph, many a batch of yogurt cheese ended up with a slight plastic flavor since I always knew I could just push that little bit near the top down a little without actually turning off the machine. YIPE! 

Of course, it is a much bigger problem for you when you have to travel so many miles to replace a spatula. Me, unfortunately, Wally World is just around the corner.

I ended up making butter today.  I just couldn't wait until tomorrow.  lol  It worked wonderfully!  YAY!  I got more than double amount of butter with less than half a gallon of cream than when I did last time that I used the jars for half a gallon of cream.  I can't wait to see how much butter the cream yields after using the coming cream separator.

Later this evening I'll see how well the blender makes smoothies.