What to Do with All that Cream

We have all been there - you buy an ingredient for a recipe and then you don’t know what to do with the rest of it! Or, you buy too much of something and then have to figure out how to use it all before it expires or goes bad. Well, that happened to The Chopping Block recently.

We ordered way too much heavy cream for Apple Fest and ended up having an abundance. Even utilizing it for other classes and events, the rest was on the verge of expiring before we could use it all. So, I was on a mission to use as much as I could!

The first thing I made was butter! If you didn’t know, it is super simple to make your own homemade butter just from whipping heavy cream. This is definitely easier with a stand mixer but you can do this by hand or a hand mixer. For reference, I used 2 quarts of cream in my mixer. That’s it, just cream. You may also add salt if you want but I prefer unsalted butter. To each their own! I whipped the cream on high speed and made sure to cover my bowl with a towel as it does like to splatter out of the bowl.

First, you will achieve beautiful stiff peaks perfect for topping your desserts or drinks.

Then, you will start to see it thicken up and get chunky, for lack of a better descriptor.

If you keep whipping for a few more minutes, you will notice the separation of butter solids and the buttermilk. This is when I stop whipping.

The next step is to strain and squeeze the butter solids to get all the liquid out.

Now you have usable butter for toast, frying, or anywhere else you want butter! At this point, you can also add different seasonings to make a compound butter. This butter can be frozen for up to one month. We now have usable buttermilk as well. This buttermilk is lighter than the store bought stuff and has a real punchy taste that I like a lot. Well, when life (or cream for that matter) gives you butter and buttermilk, you just have to make homemade buttermilk biscuits!

Buttermilk Biscuits

Scroll down for a printable version of this recipe

Yield: 4 biscuits

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 25 minutes

Total time: 40 minutes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces, chilled

1/3 to 1/2 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons melted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 400°.

2. Place the flour, baking powder and salt in the bowl and stir to combine dry ingredients.

3. Add the butter and using a pastry blender cut the butter into the mixture until it is crumbly and the butter is in small pea size pieces throughout the flour.

4. Add 1/3 cup buttermilk and process until the mixture just forms a dough. Add more buttermilk if needed so that all the flour is moistened. Be careful not to overmix the dough.

5. Roll or pat the dough on a floured surface until it is 1/2- to 3/4- inch thick. Cut into 4 squares.

6. Place on a parchment-lined sheet tray and bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes.

7. As soon as the biscuits come out of the oven, brush the tops with melted butter.

To take it a step further, and certainly to use more cream, I made a mushroom and sausage gravy to pour over my homemade biscuits! Normally to make gravy I would use a roux to thicken milk. But this time, I sauteed  mushrooms and sausage with some of my fresh new butter, then I added a couple of tablespoons of flour, and added heavy cream. Heavy cream is stable enough to reduce down and thicken on its own but the flour added stability to thicken it and save the amount of volume I wanted. Usually, to thicken milk you would need more than just 2 tablespoons of flour.

Heavy cream is great for sauce making and soup making for this exact reason. This winter season, The Chopping Block has numerous soups and stews classes to warm you up. Another way I utilized heavy cream was to make this cream of mushroom soup. The soup is great on its own, or you can use it for green bean casserole this holiday season.

Of course, heavy cream is also synonymous with desserts. With our Customer Appreciation Day coming up on November 15th, I wanted to utilize heavy cream in something sweet and freeze it now so it would still be delicious in two weeks. The easiest way to do that was to make panna cotta!

Panna Cotta is typically made with gelatin and milk, as I lovingly call it, milk Jello. But in order to use up more cream, I used 100% heavy cream. I have written about gelatin and custard before if you want to understand the tips and tricks to making these kinds of desserts. I decided to make white chocolate vanilla panna cotta this time around and will probably top it with something for texture on the day of the festivities. Make sure you come and celebrate with me - there will be lots of tastings, demos, discounts, and giveaways!

Cream is one of the most versatile ingredients to have on hand. It can be transformed into so many things but if you find yourself sitting on an abundance, then try one of these ideas to use it all up.