Whipped Cream and Other Delights. Take 2.

I hate the touch pad on my PC. It is extremely sensitive and prone to uncontrolled cursor jumping, which leads to irritating typos and occasionally the deletion of entire posts. As happened this morning...GRRRRRR.

Valuable lesson learned: don't type in the shortcut on igoogle, it doesn't autosave. Ok? Ok!

Moving right along. We left off with some leftover whipping cream. A hand mixer is an extremely useful item to have around, and especially useful for whipping cream. A stand mixer with balloon attachment is also useful. Hand mixers are cheaper! Ok, so the important thing to remember is that you want the cream to stay as cold as possible so that it incorporates air and gets all fluffy and doesn't turn into a feh greasy mess.

I don't chill the beaters, although many do. I do keep a metal bowl in my freezer especially for whipping cream because a) I whip a lot of cream and b) I live alone and happen to have a fair amount of available real estate in my freezer.*

So, put your straight out of the fridge whipping/heavy cream into a chilled bowl (15 min in freezer is fine), add some vanilla, a little bit of sugar depending on how sweet you would like your cream, and whip it to desired consistency. Keep in mind that firm peaks are about as far as you want to go, unless you want to make butter.

Which is another thing you can do with your leftover cream! Add a bit of salt, or not, and whip away. My mom used to make butter with her kindergarten kids - put a cup of cream into a mason jar, add salt, or not, and shake. And shake! And shake some more! For this method it is useful to have several young children who will find this amusing.

Or a bunch of tipsy adults.

Did you know that a little glass of bourbon goes quite nicely with a ripe pear?

Well it does. Jack (my dad), prepared this delightful nibble for us the other night while we discussed Pawn Stars.

He is doing extremely well, radiation is over! He gets a couple weeks off now and then a couple more rounds of chemo.

Ok, what you've really been waiting for -

Chocolate Ganache. What happens when heavy cream meets semisweet chocolate and both achieve their highest purpose.

3/4 c. whipping/heavy cream
8oz chopped semisweet chocolate or semisweet chips

bring cream to boil in small sauce pan. Remove from heat. Stir in chocolate. Keep stirring until chocolate is melted. Let cool a bit. Stir in some booze. A couple tablespoons...orange liqueur, rum, bourbon, scotch...

Chocolate Ganache has many uses. You can let it cool until it is thick but still pourable and pour it over cake. You can cool it to room temp and whip it and use it as for frosting, or you can cool it to room temp, then put it in the fridge until chilled. A couple of hours or so. Then you take it out, roll it into little balls and then roll them in cocoa, or fleur de sel, or coconut, or chopped nuts, or whatever flits yr fancy, and you have made...truffles.

Yep.

It's that easy.

ok babies, I got a six lb mocha cheesecake I need to take a look at. Much love!


*My freezer contains: a bag of ice. I hate to make ice. 2 forms of frozen potato. Blame this on Jeremy. An ice cream freezer. A bag of frozen shrimp. A bag of edamame. A ziploc bag with overripe bananas for the banana bread I will never make. A bag of decaf french roast from Presto George. Just in case I feel the need for coffee taste later in the day! And a metal bowl for whipping cream.