Wizard Recipes

Cream is made from milk fat. It is extremely high in fat and calories, but it creates the creamy, rich, indulgent taste in desserts and sauces.

A century ago, cream was skimmed from the top of milk that was set in a cool place. Today, machines separate comercially made cream. Many types of cream are sold:

Heavy cream and light whipping cream - Heavy cream has between 36 and 40 percent milk fat by weight. The thickest of the “sweet creams,” heavy cream is used mainly for whipping cream and for desserts.

A lower-fat version, with 30 to 36 percent milk fat, is called light whipping cream. For this cream to whip properly, emulsifiers and stabilizers are added to the cream. Both products double in volume when whipped. For this reason, whipping cream is also called double cream.

Light cream — Light cream contains 18 to 30 percent milk fat by weight and cannot be whipped. Instead of doubling in size, it remains the same volume. Hence, it is called single cream. Other names for light cream include table cream or coffee cream, because it is often the cream used to fill coffee creamers.

Half-and-half — This is a mixture of equal parts of whole milk and light cream, homogenized to prevent separation. It contains from 10 to 12 percent milk fat by weight and can be substituted in many recipes calling for cream.

The product cuts calories and fat, but it lacks some of the velvety qualities of heavy or light cream. Half-and-half commonly is added to coffee, although a far healthier alternative is skim milk.

Sour cream - Real sour cream contains 18 to 20 percent milk fat by weight. It is created commercially by introducing a bacterial culture to cream that converts the milk’s sugar, lactose, into lactic acid.

The acid gives sour cream its distinctive, tangy flavor. Stabilizers such as sodium alginate, carrageenan, locust bean gum, or gelatin are sometimes added to make sour cream thick and smooth, and rennet and nonfat milk solids are added to give it more body.

Low-fat and light sour creams are both made with half-and-half according to the same process to create a similar product with 60 percent less fat than regular sour cream. Fat-free sour cream substitute is made with the same process, and skim milk is used as the base.

Nondairy creamers and toppings -These imitation dairy products sometimes contain coconut oil, palm kernel oil, or other highly saturated and hydrogenated vegetable oils mixed with casein (a milk protein) and lactose (a milk sugar).

These ingredients create a high level of saturated fat without providing any of the vitamins and minerals found in milk or cream. Fatfree and sugar-free versions of regular coffee creamers, lighteners, and nondairy whipped toppings have various amounts of sugars and fats.

Pressurized whipped cream, packed in cans under pressure, uses gas to expand the cream. Aerosol dessert toppings do not contain any milk or cream.

Preparation Tips

Because cream is highly perishable, it should be stored in the coolest part of the refrigerator and used quickly. To whip cream, chill the cream thoroughly and place the beaters and bowl in the freezer for 10 minutes before whipping. Whip at medium speed until the cream thickens.

Serving Suggestions

Although air is added to whipped cream, a dollop atop a special treat adds extra fat (mostly saturated): about 3 grams for 1/4 cup. Cream sauces served over pasta are also high in fat. Instead, try a vegetable rich marinara sauce.

Substitute a lower-fat version of cream in recipes when possible, or use milk or yogurt. For recipes calling for sour cream, try buttermilk or yogurt.

If substitutions leave you yearning for the real thing, or if you eat more of the lower-fat item than you would have eaten of the higher-fat ingredient, you may want to stick to the recipe and eat a smaller serving as an occasional indulgence.

CREAM GLOSSARY

Chantilly cream — Named for the place in France where it is believed to have originated, chantilly cream is made simply by adding sugar and vanilla to whipped cream.

Clotted cream (also called Devonshire cream) — A sour cream that originated in Devonshire, England, clotted cream is thicker than regular sour cream. After being heated and cooled, the cream is skimmed and then eaten on scones with jam.

Crème fraîche — A product that falls between fresh cream and sour cream, crème fraîche is used often in French cooking, in which it is served lightly whipped and sweetened. It is made by adding a small amount of buttermilk to cream and heating the mixture.

It is then stored in a warm place until it thickens. This usually takes between 12 and 36 hours. The mixture is then refrigerated and can be kept up to a week.

Smetana — A dense Russian sour cream, smetana is traditionally served on borscht and salads. It is also known by the names smitane, smatana, or sliuki.

All cultured (also called fermented) milk products have varying amounts of lactic acid, which gives them their pleasingly tart, slightly tangy flavor. There’s a difference between milk product fermentation and yeast fermentation that some people confuse.

Milk product fermentation is by bacteria that produce lactic acid, while yeast (a completely different microorganism) convert sugar to alcohol in such things as bread dough, brewing beer and wine.

Today’s yogurt comes in mind-boggling array of flavors. Processors add fruit purée or fruit syrup (15 to 18 percent) either leaving it on the bottom of the container before culturing (sundae-style) or they quickly blend it into cultured yogurt just before chilling (Swiss style). Stabilizers, that also thicken it, make up about half a percent of commercial yogurt.

You can get fooled into thinking that nonfat yogurt is your perfect diet food, but the high sugar content ups the calories considerably. The amount of sugar ranges from 7 to 15 percent, but in some brands it is as high as 25 percent, twice the amount than in a can of soda. If your goal is diet food, you are better off to buy unflavored yogurt, then add your own sweetener or flavorings.

Frozen yogurt is simply Swiss-style yogurt that the processor quickly freezes. It comes in packages like ice cream and you serve it like ice cream. Other cultured products less commonly available are sour half-and-half, which is a lowerfat sour cream, and crème fraiche, that cooks use like cream in French marinades or sauces, where they prefer a thicker consistency and slightly tart flavor. Crème fraiche is easy to make at home.

Start with heavy cream, inoculate it by adding a little cultured sour cream or buttermilk, and let the mixture ferment for a day at room temperature until thickened. The result is just barely sour, with about 0.2 percent lactic acid.

Two interesting cultured products that never made it to North America are kefir and koumiss. Both of these originated with the nomads in the Steppes of Central Asia around the year 1000. The kefir you find in health-food stores is a beverage that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original, only the name is the same.

In both kefir and koumiss, two cultures ferment simultaneously, a lactic acid-producing bacteria and an alcohol-producing yeast that live in symbiotic relationship. The result is a sour, tangy alcoholic beverage that Russians and some Eastern Europeans are very fond of. It fizzes like beer and is mildly intoxicating.

The alcohol content is fairly low, ranging from 1 to 2.5 percent, much lower than beer. The acid content is 0.7 to 1.8 percent, quite a bit more tart than our yogurt. The difference between kefir and koumiss is what they begin with. They produce kefir from cow, goat or sheep milk, and koumiss from mare’s milk (though originally, before horses, the nomads used camel’s milk).

Large herds of mares graze peacefully in Russia like

cows in Wisconsin, and farmers on these horse dairies get up as early as Wisconsin farmers do to milk their herd of horses. Due to shortages of mare’s milk now, some Russian processors switched to cow’s milk to make koumiss. Even if they use cow’s milk for both koumiss and kefir, different live cultures produce the two, and they taste different.

There’s nothing like a sixpack of ice-cold koumiss on a hot summer day! Natives in the Himalayas use another fermented milk drink similar to kefir called airan.

They make this from the milk of nak (the female companion of a yak). It is hard to find airan in North America, but it is supposedly an unusual-flavored, somewhat fatty beverage that takes acquired taste buds to love