Chantilly cream might sound fancy but it’s just whipped cream that’s lightly sweetened and flavoured with vanilla. It’s basically the better whipped cream!
BONUS: Learn the easy trick to make stabilised Chantilly cream so it stays fluffy and perfect for 2 – 3 days. Super handy so you can make whipped cream ahead!
What is Chantillly cream
Chantilly cream is just the “proper” French name for sweetened whipped cream. It has the same fluffy texture as plain whipped cream but a more luxurious flavour and an elegant satiny sheen. Basically, it’s a classier, tastier version of whipped cream!
What to use Chantilly cream for
Use as you do ordinary whipped cream! Here are some suggestions:
decorate and fill cakes
pipe onto cupcakes or mini cheesecakes
fill éclairs, profiteroles
dollop or pipe on fruit
serve with apple pie, apple crumble
Stabilising Chantilly Cream (won’t deflate for days!)
Stabilising Chantilly cream means giving it structure so the whipped cream has a longer shelf life. You know how ordinary whipped cream weeps and deflates overnight? If it’s stabilised, it won’t. It will stay fluffy and hold its piped shape (or in a bowl, ready to be piped) for 2 – 3 days.
Another benefit is that stabilised Chantilly cream will not squirt out when you take a bite of cream filled éclairs. Because, don’t you just hate that!?
It tastes the same, has the same fluffy texture and looks the same as ordinary whipped cream / Chantilly cream. So there’s really no point showing you a photo of stabilised whipped cream – because it looks exactly the same!
How to stabilise Chantilly cream
There are various methods to stabilise whipped cream. My recipe uses mascarpone which is a genius, thoroughly tested discovery by my French Pastry Chef teacher, Jennifer Pogmore.
Mascarpone is a thick Italian cream with a consistency like cream cheese but a flavour like whipped cream. When whipped with cream, it becomes light and fluffy like whipped cream but it holds its form for much longer than whipped cream.
Unlike other methods of stabilising cream (cornflour/cornstarch, gelatine, pudding mix – ick!), using mascarpone does not alter the flavour or mouthfeel of the whipped cream. It also produces the most reliable result. In contrast, we found that some other methods, like cornflour/cornstarch, produced unreliable results.
Yep, we tested all the common methods. And discarded them all.
Mascarpone is the BEST way to make stabilised cream!
And onwards, to the recipe!
Ingredients Chantilly Cream
All you need is cream, vanilla and icing sugar (powdered sugar) to make Chantilly Cream. For the stabilised option, you will also need mascarpone cream. Some notes on each of these ingredient is below the photo!
Cream – Heavy / thickened cream, or cream suitable for whipping (the carton should say). Here in Australia, there are also pouring creams which which will not whip. Such creams are clearly labelled as such!
Make sure your cream is fridge cold. Warm cream won’t whip!
Vanilla – For the best flavour, use vanilla beans. Else, in order of preference, vanilla bean paste (which has the little vanilla specks in it), vanilla extract and lastly, vanilla essence (which is the most economical because it is artificial – and tastes as such).
Icing sugar / powdered sugar – This is used to sweeten the cream. It’s finer and lighter than caster sugar (superfine sugar) so it dissolves more easily and adds a slightly more delicate sweetness to the cream compared to ordinary sugar.
However, caster sugar (superfine sugar) can be used in a pinch. The quantity to use is in the recipe.
Mascarpone cream (for stabilised cream option) – This is a very thick, rich Italian cream that has a consistency like softened cream cheese (see video for consistency). Once whipped with ordinary cream, the whipped cream is as light and fluffy as usual and it doesn’t alter the flavour or mouthfeel at all.
But because, unlike whipping cream, it is thicker and “sets” in the fridge, it gives the whipped cream more structure. Meaning when you bite into something like an eclair, the cream does not squirt out the other end (as much!). And if you decorate a cake with the whipped cream it won’t weep and deflate overnight, like ordinary whipped cream.
Australians – do NOT use generic home brands (like Woolworths) as I have experienced problems with them in Tiramisu. They are not “authentic” so they break and become runny when stirred so they won’t firm up again once chilled and therefore won’t stabilise the whipped cream. Use good brands such as:
La Casa Formaggio Mascarpone (Woolworths)
Montefiore Mascarpone Cheese (Coles)
Formaggio Zanetti (Harris Farms)
Latteria Sociale Mantova (Harris Farms, pictured below)
Any from an Italian deli
How to make Chantilly cream
Whether you are making plain or stabilised Chantilly cream, the method is the same:
Beat – Put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat on high speed with a handheld electric beater or stand mixer. Move the beater around the bowl and if need be, stop once or twice to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.
Fluffy with peaks – Beat for 1 1/2 minutes (for 1 cup of cream) until it becomes fluffy and you have peaks that stand straight upright, as pictured above. The more cream you start with, the longer it will take. As a guide, 2 cups of cream takes about 2 minutes.
Do not beat for ages else you’ll end up with butter! (Really, I’m not kidding. Butter is made from cream – just beat for ages and butter will form!) But before butter, the cream will become chunky and look a bit lumpy.
And that’s it! Ready to spread onto cakes, pipe onto cupcakes or dollop on bowls of fruit!
How to store ordinary Chantilly cream
Plain, non-stabilised Chantilly cream is best whipped just before serving. It will start to deflate and “melt” a bit after around 1 hour (sooner, on hot days).
However, non-stabilised Chantilly cream can be kept in the fridge for 3 days.
How to store and use stabilised Chantilly cream
Stabilised Chantilly cream will keep for 2 to 3 days in the fridge and will hold its piped form (on, say, cupcakes) or stay fluffy and ready for piping/spreading for 2 days, sometimes 3 days.
Once whipped, do not stir prior to use as it will break the cream and make it runny.
Piped and spread – Stabilised whipped cream can be piped or spread onto cupcakes, cakes etc then refrigerated like that and it will hold its piped form.
Store in whipped form – It can also be stored in whipped form then used on the day of. It depends on what you are making as some desserts are best assembled just prior to serving, like Pavlovas, Strawberries and Cream and fruit topped desserts like Mini Cheesecakes.
For dolloping (on cakes, pies etc): Store in air tight containers in the fridge. Remember, resist the urge to stir prior to use!
For piping: Fill piping bags with stabilised whipped cream. Remove excess air and secure the end with a rubber band. Refrigerate overnight.
Piping tips: If you only have one piping bag, you can put the nozzle in that piping bag then fill with cream. See below for one piping tip for multiple piping bags.
Double-bagging method for piping tips: This is a method to use one piping tip for multiple piping bags of cream (or frosting, for that matter!). Place a nozzle in a piping bag. Then place a cream filled bag inside the nozzle piping bag and pipe away! Then remove the empty bag and repeat with remaining cream-filled piping bags.
TOP TIP: I always store stabilised whipped cream in piping bags. Whether piping into swirls using a piping tip, spreading on cakes, dolloping on pavlova or bowls of fruit, it’s just so much faster to disperse than using spoons! Plus you do not have to resist the urge to stir.
Hope you find the stabilised Chantilly cream trick handy! These days, I pretty much always stabilise my cream when I use it to decorate cakes and cupcakes because this way I can make ahead, and know that leftovers will be as great as they were when freshly made. It’s been a game-changing tip! – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
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Chantilly cream (with stabilised whipped cream option)
Ingredients
- 1 cup heavy / thickened cream or whipping cream , cold (Note 1)
- 1/2 cup icing sugar/powdered sugar , sifted (Note 2)
Vanilla flavour – choose ONE (Note 3):
- 1 vanilla pod , seeds scraped (PREMIUM option)
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (I use this most)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (best economical option)
For STABILISED Chantilly Cream option (Note 4):
- 1/3 cup mascarpone, fridge cold (40%+ fat, Note 5)
Instructions
- Whip Chantilly cream – Place all the Chantilly Cream ingredients in a bowl, including mascarpone if making the stabilised version. Whip using an electric beater on medium high for 2 minutes, moving the beater around the bowl, or until stiff peaks form – see in post for photo of what this is. If scaling up, it will take longer. Ready for use!
- To use – Fill a piping bag with nozzle of choice and pipe. Spread onto cakes or dollop on a bowl of fruit or onto pies!
This is incredible!! It really worked. I used it on your blackforest cake and it survived for almmost a week! Thank you so much Nagi
These look incredible! Haven’t yet made them yet; here in the Mid=west of the U.S. it’s deep winter and seriously cold out so making a recipe featuring the bright juicy mango seems perfect to combat the winter blues. I have a comment and a question- seperately. 1. I’m a Jew and, except for the lo ely mango (and, well, the cream too) this recipe is almost the same as our own soul food called a blintz. These are often times without a flavored filling but using a tastily-doctored cottage cheese-cream cheese combo, sweetened of course, with vanilla and sugar. Soo yummy but also fairly unhealthy— lotsa fat from the cheeses, and the crepes are often pan-fried, not baked! Just thought you’d like to know this. 2. Sadly getting marscapone, which of course would make the best stabilizer to get the cream to hold up, is just kinda outside my budget right now so would I be able to use maybe Ricotta cheese (whole milk derived) with a little cornstarch to thicken, or what about using ‘light’ cream cheese in place?Just checking on it….
I am making a Lina colada cake which has a whipped cream filling. I need to add a can of well drained crushed pineapple. Your whipped cream recipe says to not stir the whipped cream after whipping. Can I fold in the pineapple after the cream is whipped?
Hi Nagi (and Dozer)! I made Chantilly Cream to top the mini pavs I made for Christmas dessert. I prefer my whipped cream less sweet. How much can I reduce the icing sugar without affecting the consistency and stability of the whipped cream?
Thank you!
Candace
Nagi, Love all your recipes and cook book (which I bought one for my daughter as well), Have a lovely christmas day!
Just going to pop a cheeky 5 stars on all the recipes of yours I have used this Christmas! Thanks again Nagi you are a Wonder Woman and this website is my happy place.
I am a huge fan of yours but this recipe did not work for me. The whipping cream and mascarpone mixture did not stabilize. I even kept it refrigerated overnight and it was very soft. I don’t know what went wrong but I followed your recipe exactly. Very disappointed.
Hi Nagi, can I use marscapone cheese that was thawed to the same temperature as the fridge cold cream?
Wondering if anyone has made this and used to put on top of an irish coffee etc.. like the idea of having a stabilised cream ready to float when having a large family gathering, and regular whipped cream normally sinks…. any help or comment appreciated!
Hi Nagi,
I forgot to rate your recipe in my last post, and forgot to ask a question.
Are your recipes converted from cup to metric, or from metric to cup?
It’s helpful to know which is the original as auto-converters are so often wrong so I prefer to do the conversions myself.
Thank you
Hi Nagi,
Thank you so much for this recipe. Made it yesterday, and it was lovely (leftover cream still sitting proudly in the fridge). I wanted it to serve with meringue so didn’t want it too sweet. 1 TBS (15 ml) powdered sugar was perfect for me. I will make it for a future sponge cake too and think that 2 TBS might be enough for that, but I’ll taste just before it’s fully whipped in case I need to add more.
I was lucky enough to find some 45% cream, preservative free, so managed to avoid the tasteless, overly preserved 35% whipping cream which is usually the best we get in Toronto. Having now used the 45% cream, I’m hesitant to try the recipe with the 35%, but I’d be interested to know if you or your readers have had success with it as it’s much cheaper than the good stuff.
Thank you for the double-bagging piping advice. I’m nearly 80 and such a great idea never occurred to me. Brilliant!
I made it with 35% just now for tomorrow evenings desert and it whipped up beautifully!
Hi Vivienne. Greetings from Ottawa!
I just made Chantilly cream with 35% whipping cream and it turned out perfectly! I think you can feel confident giving it a try!
Candace
Thanks, Candace. I will try the 35% next time.
Can you use this on a pavlova?
I used it on a pavlova type of dessert: meringue nests filled with chestnut puree and topped with the cream. I make proper pavlovas (with fruit) quite often and am sure this cream will be a great improvement on whipping cream alone (at least the type we get in Canada). I used just 1 TB powdered sugar to counteract the sweetness of the meringue and chestnut, and my family thought it perfect. You could start with 1 TB and taste just before you get to stiff peak stage so you can add more if you wish.
Wish I had read the tip about buying the mascarpone before I purchased woolies brand, now I have to figure out what to do with it, maybe in the béchamel sauce for the cauliflower au gratin.
What a great recipe. I’m going to double it and then make it on the 23rd of December, so I can pipe it on our Christmas Eve hot chocolates and then also use for Christmas Day steamed puddings.
I don’t like sweetened cream. If I leave out the sugar and just use cream and Marscapone will the whipped cream still be stabilised?
Hi Nagi, I made this today, but as I prefer to work in Metric, I flipped the recipe over to it. At that point I noticed the Mascapone doesn’t convert from cups to metric properly… 1/3 cup becomes 200g.
I didn’t add 200g, obviously, but instead used the cup measurement and it worked out to perfection!
But you may want to adjust the conversion info, in case others don’t notice the problem.
5 stars (I’m assuming you’ll make the correction 🙂 )
Mascarpone doesn’t convert correctly or you didn’t convert correctly? 240 grams is one cup so 1/3 is 80 grams.
When I made the comment, clicking the Metric (as opposed to Cup) option on the recipe resulted in it displaying 200g for what was 1/3 Cup. It has now been corrected by the looks of it.
This is so useful. Once, only once, I thought I’d help along the process by taking the mascarpone out of the frig to soften ahead of time. Disaster. Because the cream and mascarpone weren’t the same temperature, it ‘split’ irretrievably, a sad and terrible waste.
Where is Dozer?!!!?
This sounds delicious.
I am planning to make this to add to lemon curd to put in little puff pastry cups. Any suggestions? Do you think this will work with an added ingredient?
Thank you for your help.
Hi Nagi! Could you please start including nutritional information with your recipes again? It was super helpful. Thank you!
Mary, all of Nagi’s recent recipes have the nutritional information, just not this one.
I gave you 5 stars Nagi but I haven’t made this yet, it just makes sense and seems such a great idea! I was wondering if it would be good on a Christmas pavlova?
Hi Catherine! The stabilised cream will absolutely hold up better on Pav than plain cream. But the reason I didn’t list it is because the Pav itself starts to soften once assembled so I figured both plain whipped cream and Pav have similar shelf-lives so I didn’t know if it was worth mentioning. HOWEVER, if it is so you can whip the cream the day before then just pipe it onto the Pav on the day, then ABSOLUTELY!! N x