Afternoon tea at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills is a beautiful thing. Beautiful china, beautiful crystal and flatware, beautiful service, and beautiful food that actually tastes as good as it looks.
Whether you choose the Traditional Tea or the Royal Tea, the culinary event begins with fresh, oh-so-sweet strawberries topped with a quenelle of vanilla whipped cream. That’s it. Nothing else – no extra sugar, or flavors to compete with the simply elegant – elegantly simple first course.
That’s a good thing because that means it can be replicated at home. All you need is about 1 cup of heavy whipping cream and the seeds scraped from one vanilla bean. Blend the vanilla bean seeds into the whipping cream with a hand-held mixer until the cream is whipped – just soft enough to dip a spoon into, but firm enough to just hold its shape; that’s the trickiest part because too much whipping and your cream turns into butter – quel horreur!
Vanilla Whipped Cream
Equipment
- 1 hand-held mixer
Ingredients
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream very chilled
- 1 vanilla bean
Instructions
- Pour heavy whipping cream into a large bowl.
- With a very sharp knife, split vanilla bean in half. With the same sharp knife, scrape the seeds from inside the vanilla bean pod and add to cream.
- Blend cream and vanilla bean seeds until softly whipped; cream should hold its shape but still be soft enough to scoop; about 5 mins.
- Cover and refrigerate whipped cream until ready to use.
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