Whipped cream is one of those things that brings a smile to everyone’s face. The sweet, fluffy cloud topping iced coffee, pies, cakes and many other treats and bakes has it all — the flavour, the texture and the looks.
Whipped cream is an apparently simple ingredient, but getting it right is not always an easy feat. Chefs have perfected the art of turning heavy cream into a unique foam since the 16th century, and the techniques to make it have got pretty sophisticated.
The question is. How to make whipped cream? Here are the most popular ways of making such a fantastic filling, topping and garnish.
1. Hand-whisked Whipped Cream
Heavy cream is a noble ingredient. Combine it with sugar and whip it with a balloon whisk, and it will eventually rise to form soft and stiff peaks.
The benefit of using this method is that it feels right — it’s the most traditional way of making whipped cream, even if it is labour intensive and time consuming. You also get consistent results with even-sized bubbles.
The downside? Hand-whisked whipped cream takes a lot of time to make, and that might discourage many home cooks and inexperienced bakers. Although there’s nothing wrong with this method, there are faster and more efficient ways of ending with comparable results.
2. Electric Hand Mixer Whipped Cream
Just like making whipped cream by hand, for this method, you don’t need much more than a mixing bowl and an electric hand mixer. Combine heavy cream, sugar and your favourite flavouring agent (vanilla extract, for example) and whisk away.
Although this method is significantly faster than the one described above, the results are not always as desired. Electric hand mixers are so powerful that they add air bubbles to the mixture at different rates. This often results in perfect whipped cream on the surface but flat, bubble-less cream at the bottom of the bowl. To prevent this, you must ensure you whisk the mixture evenly, which can be as burdensome as whisking by hand.
3. Stand Mixer Whipping Cream
There’s no doubt a stand mixer is a wonderful appliance; it does everything by itself with little supervision.
And although a stand mixer can knead dough and combine dozens of ingredients to make cake batter, it is not as dependable when you're cooking a recipe using whipping cream. Why? The whisk in most stand mixers doesn’t touch the belly of the mixing bowl, and you need to really scratch the surface to ensure all the cream fluffs.
This method might be helpful for large whipped cream batches but use confectioner’s sugar instead of the granulated kind; otherwise, all the sugar will precipitate to the bottom of the bowl.
4. ISI Cream Whippers
Every professional pastry chef and baker will tell you the most reliable way of making restaurant-quality whipping cream is by using a cream whipper.
These sophisticated hand-held, stainless-steel appliances rely on nitrous oxide cartridges to infuse heavy cream with minuscule bubbles evenly and consistently in the most user-friendly way. The result is stunning. Besides, using an ISI cream whipper is fun.
You need not be a trained pastry chef to use an ISI cream whipper, though, as you’ll get extraordinary results on your first try. Here are a few more benefits of using a cream whipper:
- Cream whippers save on cream costs, making up to 3L of whipped cream from 1L of starting product
- You can make low-calorie whipped cream and even foam non-dairy milk alternatives with spectacular results.
- You can use a cream whipper to whip cream, create foams and infuse drinks with flavours.
ISI whip whippers are easy to use, dependable and effortless to clean and maintain. There’s a reason cream whippers are an industry standard and every home cook’s darling — they do everything you want them to do and much more. How do you make whipped cream?
