Waste Nothing: Freezing whipping cream

So, for me, saving the whipping cream usually comes about as a markdown find on cartons of whipping cream. Although, on holidays, there's often a few dollops of whipped cream left from the big meal, or part of a carton sitting in the fridge. This can be saved. I have three ways that I freeze whipping cream, for use later on.

• I freeze whipping cream, unwhipped, in ice cube trays (as I do half & half), to add to soups and sauces. Once frozen, I keep in a large plastic bag in the freezer.

• I also freeze whipping cream right in the carton, a pint at a time. I use this to make ice cream later on. Frozen, then thawed, whipping cream will work best in frozen desserts, if the whipping cream is cooked in a custard base. This minimizes any textural changes from freezing the cream.

• And I freeze already whipped cream, in dollops, to top desserts in the next 6 to 8 weeks.

To freeze whipped cream, here are my mom's instructions:

Line baking sheets with foil.

In a large bowl, for every pint of whipping cream,
add 1/4 to 1/3 cups of confectioner's powdered sugar.

Whip with mixer just until stiff. Add 1/4 teaspoon vanilla, and adjust sweetening as desired. (If you began with 1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar, you may find you'd like just a bit more sweetening.) Whip in the vanilla and any extra sugar.

Scoop large dollops of whipped cream onto the foil. Whipped cream will lose just a bit of its volume in the freezing process, so make the dollops just slightly larger than you think you'd like.

Freeze tray of whipped cream for about 2 hours. Working quickly, peel the dollops from the foil and place in a large ziploc bag.

These dollops of frozen whipped cream
will be saved for Easter dinner.

One pint of whipping cream will make about 18 medium-sized dollops.


To use frozen dollops of cream, place a dollop on a single serving of pie, cake or other dessert. Allow to stand for 10 minutes, to soften. Then serve.



I'll be using one of the pints that I bought on markdown last week, to make ice cream for my daughters' birthday in March. Looking at my recipe for custard-based ice cream (and having bought pints of whipping cream for 59 cents each), I should be able to keep the cost to under $1 for a quart of homemade ice cream. Not bad!

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Waste Nothing: Salvaging cinnamon sticks from making spiced cider

I made 3 batches of spiced apple cider this autumn. After the mulling spices were done with each batch, I picked out the cinnamon sticks and kept them in a container in the freezer.

To salvage these seemingly spent cinnamon sticks, I do a couple of things. First, I simmer them in about 2 cups of water, for 20 minutes, to remove the stickiness from the cider. Then I dry them on a baking sheet in the toaster oven, at a low temp, for about 30 minutes.

Now they're ready to grind into cinnamon powder to add to applesauce, oatmeal, cookies and breads.

You can use a microplane to grind cinnamon. But I like my knuckles with the skin intact, so I prefer my coffee mill. I break the cinnamon sticks into pieces,

then grind to a powder.

If there is any residual graininess, I roll my mortar and pestle around for a minute to reduce it to a fine powder.

Surprisingly, even after being used for spiced cider and then simmered in water, these cinnamon sticks are still quite aromatic. I've used this freshly ground cinnamon in oatmeal already.

I did a taste comparison between this cinnamon and that I have in a canister. My best estimate is salvaged cinnamon sticks yield about 1/2 to 2/3 the flavoring power of ground cinnamon from the canister. Not too bad!

FYI -- My 3 cinnamon sticks yielded a little over 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon.

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