Whipped cream

I'm sure you have all heard about whipped cream, and while now everything is sold prepared and you don't have to prepare it yourself, people just choose to buy those prepared products and use them. What is more, they don't even buy the ingredients, as they can buy everything they need prepared by someone, that may be more tasty than their prepared one.

So nowadays it's easier to eat than it was before.

Well, as much as I like buying prepared products, especially cakes and stuff like that, I really like preparing them myself too. But sometimes they don't come out as planned and they are not as delicious as they are supposed to be. Well, what are you going to do?!

So I want to tell you about whipped cream, or, I guess, this is not that whipped cream that you know. It's like a cooked cream or something. But I really like it. However, if you are fond of a soft cream and stuff like that, you probably won't like it very much, as it is not that soft and easy to digest or whatever.

Ingredients:

• 1 litre water or milk;
• 6 tbs sugar;
• 6 tbs all-purpose flour;
• 100-150 grams unsalted butter or margarine;
• 1 packet vanilla.

Preparation process

So, before you start preparing, you should decide whether you want the cream to be made from water or milk. Now, preparing it from water is not easier or something like that. The only difference is the consistency. Water cream is softer and lighter and the cream prepared with milk is not like that. Usually I make cream with water. But it depends on which cake you want to make and stuff like that.

Before you start mixing the ingredients, you should boil the water or milk first. Until it boils you should prepare a mixture of flour and sugar. Well, usually you mix those 6 tbs flour and 6 tbs sugar. Nowadays the sugar is not that sweet, so if you want your cream to be sweeter, you should probably add more sugar than those 6 tablespoons.

Now, when the water or milk boils, you must be prepared to add that mixture to it. A little thing here, though, - when boiling milk, you must be reallly careful, for it can be still and not do anything for a long time and then suddenly just burst and rise and just be spilt all over the place. So, be attentive not to spill the milk. When it rises, you can blow and it will go down, or you can just stir it, or turn the gas off for some time. Just don't let it come out of the saucepan.

So, when the liquid is boiling, you must add the dry mixture to it. Usually I take something like 4 or 5 large spoons of this water or milk and add it to the dry mixture and stir thoroughly and then pour it back into the saucepan, so that the whole mixture is stirred nicely. Sometimes, when you stir the dry mixture directly into the boiling water or milk, it can get those small balls or something, I mean, it can't be mixed thoroughly and the whole thing can be a mess. So, that's how I do it to get rid of all those things.

When all these things are mixed well in the saucepan, you should not rest or something or just leave it unattended. It just needs more attention after that. You should take a spatula, wooden maybe, it's better if it's wooden, and stir occasionally. As the mixture is kind of thick already, it needs stirring not to get all burned and stuff. So, don't get lazy and stir and stir. The gas should be on normal level, because it will take a long time if it is on too low, and it will easily get burned if it is on too high. So, it will need at least 20 minutes or half an hour to be done. It can even take more than that. So when it gets thicker and thicker, you should tell by its consistency whether it is ready or not. Or you can just take a little of it, let it cool and just taste it and if the taste is good and it doesn't taste the flour, then it is ready. If you taste it soon after the mixing part, it's good too, because then you will understand if it needs more sugar and you can just easily add some. Just be warned not to burn your tongue! So you should really let that cool a little and then taste it.

When you decide that the mixture is done and it's ready, you should turn the gas off and let it cool or even get cold. For that, I usually let it be somewhere in a cold place or just after some cooling down time I put it in the refrigerator and let it get cool there. It should be something like a porridge, kind of.

Until the cream gets cold, you should prepare some butter.

There is this margarine called Ona Cream and I really like it and use it in all my cakes and creams and stuff. My aunt, though, uses unsalted butter. And she is a great cook, I must say, she prepares really delicious dishes and cakes, and she isn't even a cook by profession, she is a doctor! She bakes all those delicious birthday cakes you can't even imagine until you taste it and you will want to taste it again and again. She has all those pictures of the cakes and I would really like to share them with you, so that you know how amazing she is. Well, she has made lots of birthday cakes for us and for many other people. She wants to make us happy and every time she prepares cakes they are more and more beautiful and delicious, and you will be amazed how wonderful and tasty they are. She is just a master. And it's her hobby to cook.

Now, with preparing butter, I mean whipping it with a mixer. You should whip it until its soft and really white. Of course, this margarine or butter should not be all frozen and stuff, so you have to take it out of the refrigerator if it is there or just put it somewhere in the room or if it's cold there you should put it near a gas or somewhere warm so that it should be soft and on room temperature or so. It should not be very hard or frozen.

When you have whipped the margarine or butter and it's all white and soft, you can take that porridge/cream mixture. Now, you can just use it directly, or you can first mix it thoroughly with a mixer, so that it can get softer. See, when it gets colder, it gets thicker, too, and it's like hard in consistency, and if you mix it with a mixer, it will get softer and easier to add to the butter.

Adding the mixture to the butter or margarine then is pretty easy. I have this stand mixer and it's really easy to mix all this stuff that I have to mix together, beacuse I really don't put much effort in that of mixing. So, just turn the mixer on and while it's working and mixing and stuff add some pieces of the cream mixture little by little, because it will mix those things better if you add it in small pieces. When everything is done, you should taste the mixture. If you think it needs more sugar, you can add it, but don't add the granulated sugar as it won't dissolve well and the mixture will have those small granules in it. Just put some powdered sugar in the mixture and mix it. It will be good. Also, you should add some vanilla to the mixture. I usually use some powdered vanilla which is sold in packets, and there are some different kinds of it. There are vanilla with sugar, vanilla with cinnamon, vanilla with lemon, vanilla with orange, etc. I usually use vanilla with sugar, and I really like vanilla with orange, too. You can even add 2 packets of vanilla. You can also add some drops of lemon juice. And I have this vodka, where I have put some grapefruit peels in it and it has a great smell, and it tastes like grapefruit or orange even, and I usually pour some drops of it in my cream mixture.

Now, if you want your cream to be chocolate-flavoured, you can add some cocoa powder in it and mix it and it will be really tasty. I really like chocolate cream, as I like cocoa taste very much.

There are also some colourings or whatever, they can give you different colours when you add them into your cream mixture. Once I had those bought at a market, they were powdered, though and needed to be dissolved in some water first until adding to the mixture. Well, it was my first time using them, so I didn't really know how to use them. I bought some orange ones, blueberry, strawberry and kiwi and tried to use them. It was hilarious. I did everything right, but I guess I used much to colour the cream and when I ate that piece of cake my lips were all blue and my tongue and teeth (I coloured the cream in blue first and I tasted it, so... ). So, I made those small tarts in different colours and it was my birthday celebration and I had all these groupmates and we played some pranks to one of the groupmate _ we made him eat this blue tart and it was really funny when he ate it and he turned out all blue and stuff and we were laughing and, at first, he didn't understand why we were laughing and when someone told him that his lips were all blue and he smiled and then they told him his teeth were blue, too, he got all crazy and put his hands on his mouth and just tried to run to the bathroom to wash his face, but they didn't let him and then finally they let him and he was all relieved and stuff.

So that's our whipped cream, or call it whatever you want. I really like it and prepare it very often. I can even eat it without anything.

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