I needed a cup of heavy cream for a recipe I wanted to try, but the local Acme only carried it in the quart size. They had smaller sizes of non-dairy heavy cream, but I decided to pass on those.

So what to do with the extra heavy cream?

I’ve made whipped cream with my standing mixer and that works great, but it makes a fairly large batch at a time, and then I have to store it, and whipped cream only keeps for a couple days in the refrigerator.

But I had read somewhere that an immersion blender is good at making whipped cream, and it can make an individual serving to boot.

Searching the web I found some ideas, but none of the sites I checked had the proportions for an individual serving of whipped cream. They all mentioned a cup of heavy cream, which I was certain was a bit too much.

As I only wanted a small portion, I didn’t want use the container that came with the immersion blender, so I realized I could use the measuring cup. 

I put the measuring cup and the blender attachment into the fridge about half an hour before I was ready to go, so they’d be well chilled. 

I ended up using a half cup of heavy cream, two teaspoons of confectioner’s sugar, a half teaspoon of vanilla. From what I had read I was prepared for the cream to whip up very quickly, so I was careful not to overdo it, lest it turn into butter.

But I wasn’t prepared for just how fast the cream whipped up. I didn’t time it, but it didn’t seem to take more than a few seconds, maybe fifteen. Perhaps it was a bit longer, but not much.

And for the record, half a cup of heavy cream makes at least two servings of whipped cream.

The only thing I had to put it on was a slice of shoofly pie. I wasn’t sure that whipped cream would go with shoofly pie, but to my delight, it worked amazingly well.

The next time I tried using only a quarter cup of heavy cream but to my surprise it didn’t seem to whip up quite as quickly nor did it produce quite as delicate a whipped cream. It seems that perhaps a half cup might be the way to go. 

Now that I know how easy it is to whip up, I might be adding whipped cream to just about everything. There goes the waist line.