Extreme heat and whipped cream simply don’t mix.
The delicious dessert topping, good on fresh fruit, pies, sundaes and more, is easy to make at home — just beat some heavy whipping cream with a bit of granulated sugar and vanilla extract to taste. But it can be finicky in the summer and easily lose its shape. So there’s one more ingredient Duff Goldman likes to add to ensure you don’t end up with a melty mess on top of your desserts.
“I have a whipped cream hack,” Goldman tells PEOPLE as part of his partnership with Sun-Maid Raisins. “Take a quarter pound of cream cheese and whip the cream cheese with your whipping cream.”
“You barely taste it, it’s just slightly more acidic than regular cream. And your whipped cream will last all day long,” he assures.
“The reason why is, one, because cream cheese is great; but, two, for the blocks of cream cheese that you buy at the grocery store, they actually put some stabilizers in it to keep it nice and creamy and perfect. And it’s not just the cream cheese, but actually the stabilizers that they use in the cream cheese that will keep your whipped cream solid all day,” he adds.
Mascarpone will work too, but Goldman prefers cream cheese. “A super simple trick and it totally works,” he says.
Goldman plans to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday with his wife Johnna and their daughter Josephine, 3, at a friend’s house in California. The Charm City Cakes founder is in charge of dessert, of course. He’s making a no-bake frozen yogurt bark topped with raisins, maple syrup, granola and cocktail peanuts. And his other go-to sweet treat takes advantage of his whipped cream hack.
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“I’ve always liked doing a fresh fruit tart. It’s a very summery kind of thing to do. Bake off some tart shells, and then just do a fortified whipped cream with raspberries and blueberries,” he says. “Red, white, blue and delicious.”
