If I’m on your Food 52 radar, you already know that I’m crazy about whipped cream, and have my opinions on the best way to whip it, sweeten it, flavor it, fold it, work with it.
That brings me to over whipping.
It happens to the best of us! Most of the time, it’s fixable and everyone should know how.
However, whipped cream with studded with perceivable bits of butter is too far gone to fix—sorry. Just set it aside and make butter with it later.
Fortunately, most of us don’t get as far as butter before we notice that cream is a tad over whipped. Is it stiff when you actually wanted it to be soft and droopy? If you wanted it stiff, is it slightly dull and granular instead of moist and creamy-looking? Does it look even worse when you spread it on your cake? Does your piped rosette look dry and have torn, ragged edges? All of these conditions point to over whipping and all cases can be fixed. Easily. By adding more cream.
That’s almost all there is to it. If your cream is whipped a little more than you want it to be, pour some cold cream into the bowl and fold it in with your largest spatula, just until all of the cream looks moist and creamy and smooth instead of ragged and dry. Test some by spreading it on a surface, or piping a rosette if that’s how you plan to use it anyway. How much cream to add? This is an eyeball thing, but if you whipped a cup of cream, you might correct by adding 2-4 tablespoons, or even more if necessary. If you accidentally add too much cream so that the whipped cream looks too soft, give it a few strokes with a wire whisk to stiffen it. Piece of cake, right?
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