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Whipped-Cream Sandwiches
½ cup cream
½ cup chopped nuts
Powdered sugar
Vanilla
Whip cream very stiff. Add sugar to make it quite sweet, few drops of vanilla, and chopped nuts. Spread between very thin slices of buttered bread, and serve at once. Whipped cream mixed with pounded nut-meats, spread on buttered bread with candied fruits added, is delicious.
A sweet tea sandwich with almost no room for error, provided the cream is right and the assembly is last-minute. The whole recipe hinges on serving immediately: whipped cream begins weeping into bread within minutes.
- The creamUse heavy or whipping cream; around 36% butterfat is the most reliable, and lower-fat cream whips less stiffly and holds its peak less well. Half a cup whips up to roughly a cup of finished filling.
- How much sugar"Quite sweet" works out to about 2 tablespoons of powdered (confectioners') sugar for the half cup of cream. Add it once the cream is at soft peaks so it dissolves without deflating the foam.
- Whip stiff, not grainyStop the moment the cream holds a firm peak. A few seconds past that and the fat breaks into butter and whey, which no amount of beating will bring back.
- The breadA close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, sliced as thin as it will go and crusts trimmed. The butter is not optional — it seals the crumb against the moisture in the cream.
- NutsChop or pound them fine; large pieces tear thin bread when the sandwich is pressed. Walnuts, pecans or almonds all suit. Toasting them first, then cooling completely, adds flavour the original does not ask for but does not object to.
- TimingAssemble no more than ten minutes before serving. If the sandwiches must wait, keep the whipped filling covered in the refrigerator and spread at the last moment.
- YieldEnough filling for about six full sandwiches, or two dozen small triangles or fingers cut for a tea tray.
Sandwiches like this belong to the era of the afternoon tea and the ladies' luncheon, when the sandwich was as often a sweet as a savoury and the point was delicacy rather than sustenance — hence the insistence on "very thin slices." Household books of the kind aimed squarely at the middle-class woman running a home without much staff often gave a whole chapter of sandwich fillings, practical advice for anyone expected to produce a tray for callers at short notice. The nut-and-cream combination reflects the convenience of bought ingredients: cream from a dairy and shelled nuts sold by the pound.