The many lives of heavy cream.

A minute-by-minute guide to taking cream from soft ribbons to butter and every stage in between.

DOES THIS LOOK RIGHT is an amateur newsletter from an equally amateur cook on the sensory building blocks of cooking.

I love summer because dessert can simply mean some sort of fruit, a little bit of coarse sugar, and a generous dollop of sweet whipped cream. If you grew up with a can of Reddi-whip in the fridge like I did, you consider the stiff, shapeable stuff the ideal whipped cream. Turns out when you whip it yourself, there are so many textural stages before and after that picture-perfect stiff peak. The loose, soft stage is great for draping over berries; the firmer consistency ideal for spreading between layers of sponge cake. And if you’re patient enough, you can take it all the way to butter for tomorrow morning’s toast.

While this is a lesson in whipping cream, it’s also a lesson in understanding the sometimes vague language you’ll find in cookbooks – primarily, the visual differences between the various descriptors of “peaks.” Soft, firm, stiff, loose – I could go on. Let’s call this newsletter the first of a two-part lesson in peaks. This is a quick, easy process you can pull off before any BBQ or picnic this summer. The second installment (on whipping meringue) builds on some of the fundamentals in this lesson, but is geared a bit more toward occasions and show-stopper desserts. Stay tuned for meringue next time – for now, let’s take a journey through the many lives of whipped cream.

How to make whipped cream

Ingredients

1 C heavy whipping cream, chilled

2 T confectioners’ sugar

pinch salt

Equipment

Stand mixer and whisk attachment, or hand mixer

Method
Note: You can easily whip cream by hand with a chilled metal bowl and whisk. The process will take a bit longer than the time estimates below, but the visual cues remain the same.

1. Chill a metal bowl and the whisk attachment of a stand-mixer (or the whisk beaters of a hand mixer) in the freezer for 15 minutes.

2. Add the heavy cream, sugar, and salt to the chilled bowl, and begin to beat the cream on medium speed (setting 6 on a KitchenAid stand mixer).

   👀 DTLR?
   In addition to the typical visual cues, I’ve included rough time benchmarks based on whipping the cream on medium speed in a stand mixer. The point of this newsletter was to move away from often arbitrary time-based instructions, but in this case, seeing a full timeline of the process can help you gauge when you’ve reached a certain stage while you get a hang of the visual nuances.

   First Stage: No Peaks
   Small bubbles will pop up as air is whipped into the cream. Shortly, the cream will begin to get foamier and thicker as more air is whipped into the fat.

   

   

   Second Stage: Ribbons
   If you run a whisk or spoon through the cream, it should briefly hold a loose trail.

   

   

   Third Stage: Soft Peaks
   The consistency of the cream resembles yogurt, and it can hold a soft shape as you lift the whisk. If you hold the whisk right side up, the cream will fall back onto itself.

   

   

   Fourth Stage: Firm Peaks
   The cream is beginning to form peaks as the whisk runs through it. If you hold the whisk right side up, the tip of the peak will fall back onto itself.

   

   

   Fifth Stage: Stiff Peaks
   The cream holds its shape in the bowl, and when you lift the whisk and hold it vertically, the tip of the peak stands tall.

   

   

   Sixth Stage: Over-beaten
   The whipped cream will start to clump and resemble a cloud. You’ll notice it start to take on a grainy texture. If you go too far and reach this point, add a bit more heavy cream (a tablespoon at a time) to the bowl and reduce the speed of the mixer to get back to stiff peaks.

   

   

   Seventh Stage: Butter
   Eventually, you’ll hear sloshing in the mixer – the stage at which point the fat has separated from the liquid in the cream leaving butter and buttermilk. Obviously this is far past the original goal of whipped cream, but not the worst situation in the world. To make sweet cream butter, pour off the buttermilk, and rinse the butter in batches of cold water until all the buttermilk is out of the block of butter. Form into a block, and refrigerate.