Pork roast and whipped cream
I’m busy at work today, but I do have two pictures to post and a small discussion to start. First of all, here is a shot of n8’s delicious dinner (from the cookbook you gave him, mom) from Sunday night:
It’s a pork roast flavored with jerk seasoning and accompanied by luxuriously soft, caramelized yams and wilted watercress. I had a hand in cooking the roast and it turned out a bit dry, but we learned our lesson and we have a roast left over from the FreshDirect delivery with which to give it another go.
For dessert, we had my Guiness Ginger cake with freshly whipped cream, courtesy of my bad ass 9-speed.
I got my panties in a twist over getting heavy cream with the right content of milk fat. I was so confused. I’ve always seen my mom using “heavy whipping cream,” which is apparently different from light cream, heavy cream, and light whipping cream. I read online that cream must have at least 30% milk fat to be whippable. Anyway, n8 finally went and bought a small container of regular old heavy cream, and it whipped beautifully.
Here’s a question, though: can you save whipped cream and eat it the next day? We did just that, and n8 didn’t really notice a difference after 24 hours. I found it a bit mealy, but that might have been mental. It certainly retained its stiff peaks.
Another question: every time I read about whipping cream, there are warnings about whipping it too much and ending up with butter. Is that true? Is that all butter is? If so, why don’t we all just make our own butter? Please advise.
Comments
Cream should be whipped until it has soft peaks, not stiff peaks. Unless you stabilize it somehow, usually with gelatin (you can find directions for stabilizing whipped cream on the ’net) what happens is that it tends to separate a bit, or go a bit flat, not turn mealy. That is definitely your imagination, or the cream was whipped too much to start with. But leftover whipped cream is certainly still edible!
I suppose we could make our own butter, but I’m not sure if the super-homogenized heavy cream most of us have access to would turn into butter. Even if it would, it would be expensive. Since you’d have to drain off all the excess liquid, in the form of whey, there would be a lot of waste, unless you used it in baking or something. If the cream is 30% butterfat, I guess only that % would become butter and the rest would drain off.—Mom
I had “soft,” but I switched it to “stiff.” They were really more like “firm.” Thanks for the wisdom!
Hi Leland, Your Mom just sent me your “blog” or whatever you call it. What fun. As far as whipping cream goes, if you just add a wee bit of gelatin (maybe about 1 t.) to a T. of water and mix in the whipped cream, it keeps it beautifully! And when spreading powdered sugar on a cake, all you have to do is put it in a sieve and shake and you will the desired affect without any special equipment. The recipes look delicious, must try some. Also about whipping cream, it is hard to find good cream in a regular grocery store. I usually get mine which is organic from a small bakery in Sharpsburg. The real stuff!
Once, I mistakenly bought heavy cream instead of whipping cream… Attempting to whip it resulted in the first time I actually cried in the kitchen. I threw down my handmixer and had to leave my apartment, I was so angry. Whip as I might, the cream would not thicken. Eventually, it started to separate into little clumps…of butter. If I hadn’t been so dejected and miserable, I might have stopped to marvel (this was before my blog, so taking a picture didn’t occur to me). So yes, you can make your own butter. But why?
Well, butter can be expensive I guess. It just seems too simple! Did you taste your butter?
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