Whipped Cream

Preparation

1. Whipped cream is rarely used on its own as a dessert. It usually serves as a cream for cakes or cannoli, goes with fruit salads, or decorates individual desserts and pastries. For store-bought cream to whip well into a thick cream, try to buy the real thing with a fat content of at least 28-30%. We usually buy natural 33% cream from the same producer.

2. Ahead of time, put the cream and the bowl or mixer bowl you will whip it in into the fridge.

   

   The fruit you serve with the dessert depends on the season. In summer and autumn, when the choice of fresh fruit is greatest, you can take plums, apples, grapes, not-too-juicy pears and so on. By the way, don’t make this dessert with overly juicy fruit. In winter, especially around New Year, choose citrus fruits, kiwi, bananas and firm sweet-and-sour apples.

   

3. Make the jelly base: if you like, I advise pouring a little cherry jelly into each dessert glass, about a quarter of the way up. The cherry jelly acts as a base for the fruit and cream. Jelly is quick and easy to make from frozen or fresh cherries, sugar and instant gelatin.

   

   Once the cooked jelly has cooled to room temperature, pour it into the prepared glasses and put them in the fridge. After 2-3 hours the jelly will set, and you can start assembling the dessert. By the way, the glasses may fog up a little, which is normal.

   

Fruit

1. Prepare all the fruit ahead of time, since cream whips very quickly. Peel the oranges and prepare the segments as for an orange salad, the Sicilian orange salad. Peel the mandarins, carefully remove the white pith and separate them into segments. Peel the kiwis and cut them into small slices. Peel the banana and slice it like the kiwi. Cut the red sweet-and-sour apples into four pieces and cut out the cores. Without peeling them, cut the apples into thin, long wedges. To keep the apples from darkening, sprinkle them with 2 tsp of lemon juice and toss.

   

2. Arrange the fruit in the glasses. In a deep bowl, combine the sliced kiwi, orange segments and sliced banana and immediately divide the mixture evenly among the serving glasses. If you have more fruit mixture than you need, you can eat the rest. But don’t pile the fruit too high, or the whipped cream may tilt and topple over. Level the fruit mixture a little on top of the jelly.

   

   Arrange the red apple wedges in the glasses radially, like “rays.” Closer to the edge, arrange the mandarin segments, so there is a sort of hollow in the center for the cream. That finishes the fruit salad. Put the glasses in the fridge.

   

How to whip the cream

1. You can whip the cream with a whisk or a mixer. It’s important not to force the process or rush. Even more important, whip it cold. Cream that isn’t chilled will most likely separate or stay liquid.

2. Begin whipping at low speed: unhurried, take the whipping bowl out of the fridge and pour in the well-chilled cream.

   

   Nobody can tell you exactly how long to whip. Judge only by the look of the thickness, and gradually increase the speed. Cream begins to thicken quite quickly: usually after 2-3 minutes its consistency changes a lot.

   

3. As soon as “furrows” and “ridges” like frozen ocean waves stay on the surface of the cream, add the powdered sugar. Don’t use regular sugar: it won’t have time to dissolve and will crunch on your teeth. The amount of powdered sugar is to taste. For very sweet cream you can add up to 100 g. For a fragrant cream, add a pinch of vanillin.

   

   Keep whipping until the cream reaches maximum thickness and looks like a fairly dense, stable, snow-white mass, nothing like a liquid. Stop there: if you keep whipping, the cream will start turning into butter. In appearance and consistency, good whipped cream is close to meringue and does not separate for a long time. Less fatty cream is sometimes whipped with gelatin, and if there’s no time, people just buy a canister. But believe me, whipping a good product with enough fat is very easy.

   

Serving

1. Put the cream on the fruit. A disposable piping bag with a removable tip is handy for this. Spoon the cream into the piping bag and pipe it over the fruit salad in a cap. You can practice first by piping onto a saucer. Usually the knack comes right away.

   

   Pipe the cream into each glass of fruit in turn, trying to form a compact cone. Ideally the cream sits in the center, in the hollow, and doesn’t cover the rim of the glass.

2. Grate a piece of milk chocolate (or a chocolate candy) and sprinkle over the dessert, just a pinch. The fruit dessert is ready to serve and needs no extra chilling. As a nice bonus, instead of chocolate you can drizzle over a teaspoon of cherry preserves with a whole cherry; it spreads beautifully over the white cream.

   

   Any dessert with whipped cream is the peak of pleasure. Make a treat for the holiday table. In a persimmon dessert, it’s quite fitting to replace the ice cream with whipped cream. Try it.