Homemade Whipped Cream

Who loves whipped cream? This girl right here! Who does not enjoy pre-made and processed foods when making it from scratch takes about 2 minutes? ME ME ME! So if you can guess, I DO NOT like buying whipped cream. Its expensive, it's REALLY easy to make yourself, and the real thing tastes SO MUCH BETTER! I thought I'd share this recipe (if you could even call it that) because whipped cream can be used to decorate pretty much any dessert. Not only is it good, but it makes the dish look "pretty" and part of impressing is in the presentation.

Ingredients:
-1 cup whipping cream
-2-3 Tablespoons powdered sugar

Pour your cup of whipping cream into a bowl (make sure you use a bowl with some extra room because the whipping cream will double in size) and beat on medium speed until soft peaks form. What is a soft peak you may ask? This is when you insert the beater (when its off!) into the whipping cream and the cream forms a peak when you pull it out (normally, the cream would drip right off the beater). A soft peak will fall right back over into its side while a stiff peak will continue standing strait up. Save that stiff peak knowledge for later because you will need it! Once your whipping cream forms soft peaks, add your 2-3 tablespoons powdered sugar. I ALWAYS use 3 tablespoons because I like my whipped cream sweet but add powdered sugar to your liking. Finally, beat your cream on medium speed until stiff peaks form (remember that stiff peak knowledge!). This should happen relatively quickly.

Here is what your whipped cream will look like when it's finished:

Who could resist that fluffy goodness? I certainly couldn't. If you want to make it chocolate flavored, add a little cocoa powder. Same goes for any type of flavoring you can buy (vanilla, almond, etc.).

If you just want to put a little dollop on a piece of pie or some ice cream, stop here and go to town! I almost exclusively use whipped cream to decorate my cakes so keep reading to find out how to do that.

Grab a large cup and a gallon zip lock bag. Place the zip lock bag into the cup and then fold the edges over to create a pouch. Spoon your whipped cream into the bag. It should look something like this:

There is absolutely no reason to buy piping bags. They are robbery EXPENSIVE and you can get just as good of an effect with a zip lock bag. Cut the corner off of your ziplock and start decorating. The size of your cut will determine the size of your whipped cream decoration so be careful here. I don't have any type of fancy cake decorating skills, so I usually just cut a small hole and then do uneven circles around the outside edge of the cake(see picture below). Sometimes, if my design isn't really turning out, I just pipe the rest of the whipped cream onto my cake and then take a whisk and play with the whipped cream until it all looks uniform. You really can't mess this step up.

One thing to remember, whipped cream will melt if it gets hot. The heat from your hands is not the whipped cream's friend, so try to do the decorating as quickly as possible. Also, any cake that has whipped cream on it needs to be refrigerated.

Here is a picture of a cake decorated with the whipped cream:

SO EASY and this cake definitely looks store bought. Enjoy!