A recipe hack that doesn't work and a smart one that does
Our pals at Apartment Therapy figured out that you can't make whipped cream in a French press this week. Duh.
In yet another sterling example of why a working knowledge of chemistry will set you free, had the brave experimenter paid attention he or she would have known that whipped cream is milk fat mixed with air. Whipped cream needs to have at least 80% of its volume made up of air and there's no way something that works as a plunger can get that much air into a liquid. The need for air thing is the reason you can't make whipped cream in a blender either.
Short cuts abound but I find the best way to make whipped cream is to make it the way my grandmother did, with a bowl and a wire whisk. Making whipped cream by hand can be quite a work out but I find that when I have to work at something like this, I am more in touch with what I'm eating and I also eat less of something when I know how much labor went into it.
Take a tumbler or chrome steel mixing bowl and a cord whisk and placed them inside the freezer for approximately an hour. Once they're chilled, take a cup of cold, heavy cream and a tablespoon or two of powdered sugar and add them to the bowl.
Put the bowl in the crook of your arm and commence to whisking. You can also set the bowl down on a table or counter but I find I have more control if I hold the bowl against myself with my left arm.
Whisk for about ten mins. Nothing will occur for about the first half of of that point but the mixture will slowly thicken. About nine/10ths of the manner through the cream and air reach important mass and the aggregate stiffens significantly. You're on the tender top segment. Soft top is what you want in case you're going to add your whipped cream to some other recipe.
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| This is what "soft height" whipped cream looks as if. Once you're at this degree |
you have about another minute to go. Photos from Pastry Pal.
If you're making a dessert topping hold going for about every other minute and your whipped cream will reach the consistency of the whipped cream that comes out of a can of Redi-Whip. Stop without delay.
If you preserve whisking, the fat globules in the whipped cream will begin to stick collectively in preference to the air bubbles you simply labored into the combination. When that occurs, the combination separates into butter and butter milk. That in itself is pretty cool however possibly not what you are after.
Congratulations, you just made whipped cream.
You need a low-fats model of this? Eat a teaspoon of it instead of a quart.