Start your Independence day off right with some patriotic waffles! Whip cream and berries. Mmmm….
You do know how to make fresh whip cream, don’t you? It’s so easy, and so delicious! So I thought I’d quickly find a link to a recipe on-line of how to make it.
To my surprise, the first 5 recipes aren’t like I do it. The first three do it with a hand whisk. Um. No. Now, I have seen my mother do it with a fork – but it took a long time! And usually you’re in a hurry at breakfast. Yes, use an electric mixer. It’s the 21st Century! My family makes ours with granulated sugar and vanilla extract. We use granulated sugar. I think powdered sugar, or confectioners sugar, would give it and off flavor. If you don’t use too much granulated sugar and give it only a couple of minutes it will dissolve right in and not be grainy. For the vanilla extract, if you live in Texas or California, Adam’s Best Vanilla is the best! No lie. (Note: Even Adams has an extract named Vanilla Extract and that is NOT what you want, you want Adam’s Best by Adam’s.)
Here’s another tip shopping tip about the cream. You’ll see cream labelled lost of things: cream, whipping cream, and heavy whipping cream. They will all have different amounts of milk fat and some will whip more than others. You want to read the the labels and find the one with the most milk fat. It will whip the easiest and hold it’s peaks the best.
The recipe I found with the best directions is for unsweetened whipped cream. So at Step 4, when you start to get soft peaks, add a little bit (a tablespoon or so) of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla. (They tell you to add vanilla at the beginning, but in my experience it seems to be best to add in later.)
And it wasn’t even easy to find a video. In fact, in the tutorial that came up first in my google search, I think it was whipped too long and you would start to get that butter flavor. Here’s the best video I found. He does a good job of showing you the steps the cream goes through and he adds the sugar late (but he uses powdered sugar.) I also don’t put my beater and bowl in the freezer beforehand, rarely whip more than a cup or half cup (it increases in volume as you whip it), and I use a big bowl to contain the splatters. He also goes one step further and gives you a tip for using a pastry bag, but stop before then. (He adds some pudding mix to do that.)