You've decided you want to prepare something special but simple for
your family. Everything looks pretty straight forward until you see that the recipe calls for heavy cream!
So what does that mean? We at Lady Personified can help you out a bit with this delimma so read on. Though it
may not seem important since milk is milk, right? In order for your recipe to be successful you will need to use the
type of milk that is called for because it determines the butter fat content in the product. The major categories are
Whipping Cream (30-36% fat), light coffee cream (18-30% fat) half and half (10.5 - 18% fat). There is also heavy cream
or heavy whipping cream that is 38% fat. The British have what is called double cream which is 48% fat or 8%
higher than anything available in the U.S. There are ways to create substitutes of one for the other, but it isn't very satisfactory
and requires some skill. An example is that you can "make" 1 cup of heavy cream by mixing 3/4 cup of whole
milk with 1/3 cup of melted butter. This will achieve the technical equivelent but it can only be used for cooking because
it won't whip in this form. You may be more familiar with the common forms of milk sold today...whole, skim and reduced
or 2% milk. Once again these relate to the amount of butter fat in the milk. Whole milk has 3.25%, skim up to
0.5% and low fat is 1%. By the way, if you are serving hot tea use a lower fat content milk and never use cream.
