Stabilize Your Whipped Cream With This Simple Addition

When it comes to dessert, homemade whipped cream is a dream come true. Light, airy, and sweet, it complements everything from baked goods to berries without taking center stage. It's also a delightfully decadent topping for elevated ice cream sundaes. The only drawback to whipped cream is its longevity — or lack thereof.

As it's standardly made, whipped cream has a well-earned reputation for losing its signature airy height within just hours of piping it, which kind of defeats the purpose of using it in the first place. While there are a handful of ways to stabilize it to help it hold its shape for longer, most methods require specialized ingredients and skills. If you're looking for a quick fix that won't derail your vision or flavor profile, stabilizing whipped cream with cream cheese is the way to go.

Though this might just seem like a hack for making cream cheese frosting, you'll be using between two and four times as much heavy cream as cream cheese for this hack. The whipped cream will still be fluffy and light, just with a touch of added richness and maybe a hint of tangy cheesecake flavor, making it more similar to a whipped cream frosting. However, the additional tanginess will only elevate most desserts, and a touch of nuanced flavor is worth a whipped cream that will hold its shape for several days.

As with most baking hacks, there are some inside tips that will help the process go smoothly and almost guarantee success. The first tip is to avoid using too much cream cheese. As mentioned, a 4:1 ratio of heavy cream to cream cheese is usually plenty, though you can add a bit more if you're still concerned your whipped cream will deflate. Additionally, if you want as little cream cheese flavor as possible, try using mascarpone. It's silkier and has a milder flavor than typical cream cheese, but still offers an easier alternative than stabilizing your whipped cream with gelatin.

The second tip is to make sure everything is the proper temperature. The cream cheese or mascarpone should be room temperature to ensure it whips easily into the whipped cream, while the heavy cream and your mixing bowl should be nice and cold. Friction caused by whipping the mixture into soft peaks naturally creates heat, which is the enemy of beautifully fluffy whipped cream. A cold whisk, bowl, and cream help prevent the mixture from overheating, while softened cream cheese reduces the risk of overmixing.

Temperature also plays into the final tip for making this improved whipped cream. You can make it a day or two before you plan to use it, and it'll remain airy and pipeable, provided it's in an airtight container in the fridge. The container will prevent it from drying out, and cold temperatures in the fridge will prevent both deflation and spoilage.