This Mason Jar Whipped Cream Shortcut Will Make You Look Like A Kitchen Magician

For a food that one can create with as little as one ingredient, there sure are a lot of ways to make and buy whipped cream. Our basic, foolproof whipped cream recipe adds powdered sugar and vanilla extract to the titular dairy and blasts it with beaters until it begins to resemble the majestic landscape of Candy Land. Oodles of options abound in grocery stores and supermarkets, but there's one whipped cream technique that'll make you look like a kind of pioneer-era MacGyver without the equipment or the nitrous oxide: a Mason jar shake.

To master Mason jar whipped cream, fill a Mason jar about halfway with heavy cream and shake it. And that's pretty much it. If you're at a party and your otherwise perfect host has forgotten all about the dessert's whipped topping, this simple trick will make you a culinary hero. The biggest challenges are making sure that heavy cream is in the refrigerator to begin with and then agitating it for long enough (most likely a few minutes) to turn the liquid into a confectionary cumulus cloud. If you can hang onto a subway pole on a particularly jerky route, carry an armful of groceries, or wrestle with a duvet cover, you probably have the stamina to undulate your own whipped cream.

Once you really get to shaking that Mason jar whipped cream, you find a rhythm — an almost meditatively musical beat that you just don't want to stop. But stop you must, for heavy cream shaken for too long will turn into butter. And that would be fine — great, even — if you were aiming to make a bit of homemade butter, but it doesn't make as much sense on top of pie or ice cream. If you've added powdered sugar and vanilla extract to your heavy cream, as many recipes advise, said butter won't be especially versatile, either.

You can edit your base for unique whipped cream flavors pretty easily, but it does diminish some of the trick's DIY, no-frills shine. A sweetener of some kind is fairly common, as is the aforementioned vanilla, but any extract will impart its own quality to the blend and enhance whatever it ultimately crowns. Mint extract always pairs terrifically with chocolate, maple would be marvelous with pumpkin pie, and a little lemon infusion can make even the simplest fruit desserts sing.