Taste? Consistency? How is it made?
I have a recipe for a Devonshire cream trifle. It includes heavy cream, sugar and sour cream beaten together. Does this sound like a workable substitute? If not, what do you suggest?
Mmmm… clotted cream. The real stuff is a deep cream colour with a yellow crust. A scoop of it won’t run, but will bulge a little like an over-ripe brie. I can’t really describe the taste, except to say that it’s rich and sweet without being cloying.
It’s made by heating very rich milk in trays and scooping off the clots. See here.
I dunno about faking it. If you can’t find any to buy I’d just use the most full-on cream you can find. Here is a slightly different mock cream recipe.
Thanks so much! You’re wonderful! That’s exactly what I needed. I’ve often wondered about clotted cream when I come across a mention in a book (I love British mystery novels) but I’ve never seen any for sale here in Louisville. A cream tea sounds sinful!
Thanks to you, I think I understand what it is now. I grew up on a farm and for a while we kept a few milk cows. Mom would take the raw milk and pasturize it in a machine that looked like a huge electic kettle. The cream would rise to the top in a thick yellowish foam. I guess this was close to clotted cream? We never ate any of it though, cause my mom was a lady ahead of her time when it came to low-fat diets. I think she fed it to the barn cats!
I like your mock cream recipe better than the one I had. I plan to make my anglophile friends swoon over this desert.
While we’re here, can someone fill me in on American cream terminology, because the description of ‘heavy’ cream confuses me:
In the UK, we have (in terms of ordinary cream):
-Single cream - like very rich milk - used for pouring.
-Double Cream - thick, pale yellow, very rich cream - can be poured as it is, or can be whipped (but whips into something quite dense and buttery)
-Whipping cream - sort of a compromise between the two - lower fat than double cream and whips up firm, but much lighter and frothy than whipped double cream.
Does the ‘heavy’ in America refer to weight or consistency? (single cream has the least fat and is heaviest in terms of weight per unit volume, but double cream is the thickest and richest).
Sometimes you can find genuine clotted cream or Devon cream in specialty or organic markets, like Whole Foods or health-food stores.
Mmmmmm, clotted cream on Mr. S’s fresh homemade cranberry scones . . .
Heavy Cream is between double cream and single cream, but nearer to double cream in use.
http://www.foodsubs.com/Dairyoth.html gives some more details.
It is possible to find long life clotted cream in some US speciality food markets, and you can get the equivalent of double cream (called industrial cream) from professional food distributors.
So the term ‘heavy’ denotes consistency, not actual weight.
Yep, heavy = thick cream.
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