three teaspoons

I have been on a bit of a bender lately, a highly fattening creamy joy ride. No half and half for my steaming cup 'o joe, only pure unadulterated cream (schlagobers here in Austria). Watching the lovely white tendrils curl into my first mug of coffee this morning got me wondering about milk and all its derivations. Before milk is homogenized, the lighter cream rises to the top and is skimmed off. The amount of butterfat in the cream determines the stability of the cream and how well it will whip. The higher the fat content, the easier it is to whip.

In the United State, the low-down on high fat cream is something like this:

Half and Half (Cream is mixed with Whole milk) 12% fat

Single Cream or Light Cream 20% fat

Whipping Cream 30% fat

Heavy Cream 36% fat

Double Cream 48%

The English enjoy the guilty pleasure of clotted cream at 55-60% fat. Unpasteurized milk is heated and the savory goodness is skimmed off the top.

Sour Cream is a 12% fat cream that has been exposed to a bacterial culture which causes it to sour. Similarly Creme Fraiche is 20% fat, but it is unpasturized, so it naturally contains the souring bacteria.

Butter is also made from cream. It is churned to separate the butterfat from the buttermilk.

There seems to be a glut of strawberries on the market right now. We've been enjoying them nightly topped with whipped cream. As I don't own a blender, I've been doing it by hand. I keep telling myself that the effort of whipping burns off the fat.