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Fruit Whip
Put a little jelly or preserve in the bottom of lemonade glasses. Fill up with sweetened and flavored whipped cream. May be served as an evening dessert with light cakes.
An assembly rather than a cooked dish, and the only real variables are the cream and the glass. A few notes on both.
- Lemonade glassesGenerally a tall tumbler; any tall glass or stemmed goblet works, and in a clear glass the jelly shows as a dark band at the base.
- Whipped creamUse heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent fat or higher, well chilled, and stop at soft peaks that just hold their shape. Ultra-pasteurised cream whips more slowly and collapses faster, so beat it in a cold bowl and serve within the hour.
- Sweetened and flavoredFigure 1 to 2 tablespoons of sugar per cup of cream, plus a teaspoon of vanilla or a spoonful of the syrup from the preserve. Confectioners' sugar dissolves without grit and its cornstarch gives the whip a little extra staying power.
- The jelly at the bottomTwo to three teaspoons per glass is enough. A stiff jelly stays put; a loose preserve or a thin syrup will bleed up into the cream and turn it pink and slack, so drain juicy preserves first.
- YieldOne cup of cream whips to roughly two cups. How many glasses that fills depends entirely on the size of the glass; in a small tumbler, three or four. Scale from there.
- Make-aheadWhipped cream weeps as it stands. Spoon the jelly into the glasses and chill them ahead, but whip and fill just before serving, or stabilise the cream with a little gelatin or mascarpone if it must wait.
- Light cakesThe recipe does not specify; ladyfingers, macaroons or plain wafers would suit.
Serving it in lemonade glasses reflects the era's fondness for desserts -- charlottes, whips, junkets and Bavarian creams -- built in tumblers so the layers showed. The word whip is one of the older dessert terms in English, used since at least the eighteenth century for a frothed cream or wine mixture, and the name survived long after the original method of skimming the froth off a bowl of cream had been replaced by simply beating the whole of it.