On National Whipped Cream Day, Here’s a Bit on its History, and Recipe to Whip it up at Home!

Celebrated on the 5th of January, National Whipped Cream Day urges you to commemorate a food item that is as versatile as it is comforting, especially in desserts.

Whipped cream is everyone’s favorite topping. The soft and airy cream, whipped to perfection, is often enjoyed cold, on a variety of desserts from waffles and pancakes to cakes and cookies, and from hot chocolate and chocolate martinis to pies and tarts. Where there’s chocolate, there’s whipped cream. And more accurately, where there's a sweet dish, there’s whipped cream.

While it's easy to buy a can of whipped cream from the market, it's also possible to make whipped cream at home, especially if you're aiming for a homemade dessert and a unique texture and flavor that’s not too sweet. When you make it at home, you can control the amount of sugar that goes in, and if you want to be inventive, even add flavors like vanilla, citrus or anything else that’s light and easy to mix, depending on what it's going on top of. You can also, in the spirit of experimentation, add color. While whipped cream is recognized by its bright and energetic white color, it's possible to add food coloring and create your own unique whipped cream.

Here’s a simple recipe to make whipped cream at home.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cold heavy cream
• 2 tbsp confectioners’ sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

• Use a handheld or stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Whip the heavy cream, sugar and vanilla extract on a medium to high speed until peaks form.
• Make sure you're whipping at a low temperature. If it's too warm, it’ll become butter.
• The peaks shouldn't be too soft or loose, nor too stiff. They should have a medium consistency, perfect for topping dishes with and to pipe onto desserts.
• If you realize that you've overwhipped the cream, add some more cold heavy cream and fold it in gently with a spatula until the peaks smoothen out.
• Aim to use immediately, since freezing or storing it in the fridge often causes the whipped cream to lose some of its creamy texture and lightness.

Whipped cream has been around since at least the 16th century. In 1549, it was included in an Italian recipe by Cristoforo di Messisbugo, a chef in the court of Alfonso I d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara. In the cookbook Banchetti composizioni di vivande e apparecchio generale (roughly ‘Banquets, Recipes and General Utensils for the Kitchen and the Table’) is a recipe for whipped cream under the name Lattemelle. But it was only in 1629 that it was first referred to as whipped cream, through the French crème fouettée. Before this, it was called ‘milk snow’, being referred to as neige de lait in French and neve di latte in Italian, both which translate to milk snow. In English, there’s a 1545 recipe for ‘A Dyschefull of Snowe’ but it includes egg whites and rosewater and can be called a variation of the whipped cream at best.

There were different techniques to make the whipped cream before electric mixers came about. Until the 19th century, a common method included using a willow or rush branch as a whisk. But such processes were labor intensive, taking over an hour of whipping to create a single batch of whipped cream.

From Chantilly in France comes a popular origin story for the chantilly cream, which is made with sugar, cream and vanilla, the same three ingredients used to make whipped cream. Frenchman Vatel was a butler of Prince Louis II de Bourbon-Conde. The story goes that one evening Vatel didn't have enough cream to serve with a dessert during a special dinner. So he shook out what he had to increase its volume, thus creating the chantilly cream. However, this is a story alone. Vatel wasn't even a cook and the chantilly cream appears only 50 years after his death. While the ingredients are similar to whipped cream, the chantilly cream isn't just a dollop on top of desserts, but an element of many desserts, like pavlova, strawberry and cream, and rum baba cake. But the whipped cream has global appeal and is consumed in creative ways by people all over the world.

Fun facts about whipped cream:

• Betsy Davis holds the record for creating the most whipped cream portraits in 2 minutes, making 9 such pictures in the time.
• Melissa Arkin and Casey McLaughlin hold the record for making the tallest dollop of whipped cream on a mug of hot chocolate, making a 7 ¼ inch tall dollop.