Ingredient substitution assistance

HI - need some help. I have heavy cream. I have skim milk. My bechemel recipe calls for whole milk. I can find plenty of "I don't have cream what do I sub" but not what I should mix together to get an approximation of whole milk. Suggestions? My inclination is to do 1/2 and 1/2 and call it a day, but if anyone knows what it really SHOULD be... Thanks!

The heavy cream in my fridge is 6g fat per 15ml. Assuming it's pretty close to water in density, that's 6/15 or 40% fat.
This site says it should be 36-38%.
Let's use 36% since it's easily divisible.

Whole milk is 4% milk fat. Skim is 0%.

So if you want 1 liter of whole milk, you need 40ml of that to be fat, approximately. Since that all has to come from the whipping cream, you'll need enough cream to match that. At 36%, you'd need about 111 ml, the rest of the liter from skim.

A reasonable approximation for a quart would be to take off 7-8 Tbs of milk from the top and replace with heavy cream.

So for a cup, then, I'd replace 2 Tbs of skim milk with heavy cream? Approximately?

Yeah, that's probably a little rich, but not by much.

Figure it this way:
1) A teaspoon is a bit more than 2% of a cup (8 ounces -> 16 tablespoons -> 48 teaspoons, so 1 tsp = 1/48th cup)
2) Heavy cream is a little more than 1/3 fat, so it takes not quite three times the volume to get the amount of fat you want.
3) You want about 4%, so figure five to six teaspoons of heavy cream, the rest skim

Harold McGee would probably have my skin for this kind of roughshod math, but it'll get you through.

JoelF wrote:Harold McGee would probably have my skin for this kind of roughshod math, but it'll get you through.

Least you did the math. I'd of simply added heavy cream to skim until it tasted right, erring on the rich side.

And I really appreciate it Math is hard!

I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm making faux brandade (from fresh cod) so it probably doesn't matter really all that much anyway Looking at recipes linked to from this discussion viewtopic.php?f=16&t=26756&hilit=brandade as well as the one in my 1080 Recipes cookbook.

FWIW, we keep only 1% milk in the house, which I use successfully for bechamel all the time. It isn't the same as a whole-milk bechamel, but if I needed the extra richness, I'd do what GWiv suggests, except I'd add the cream to the sauce and not the milk.

The brandade was very good. Not as rich as Avec's version, but very tasty. I used the recipe here - http://leitesculinaria.com/1797/recipes ... ndade.html but added some extra garlic and a little butter at the end. I used about 1.5 lb fish, instead of the 1 lb called for. Thanks for the help!

For future reference, this is a great source for food substitutions: http://www.foodsubs.com/

I guess I can put this here.
I have a recipe book that asks for "plain chocolate" to make a hazelnut and chocolate cake. In other recipes they call for unsweetened, bittersweet, etc. Should I assume this is unsweetened? There is 1/2 cup sugar added to the recipe, and it's only a single-layer 9" cake.

Here's another one:
2-ounce piece coconut cream? All I know as coconut cream is the stuff to make piña coladas.

Pie Lady wrote:I guess I can put this here.
I have a recipe book that asks for "plain chocolate" to make a hazelnut and chocolate cake. In other recipes they call for unsweetened, bittersweet, etc. Should I assume this is unsweetened? There is 1/2 cup sugar added to the recipe, and it's only a single-layer 9" cake.

Here's another one:
2-ounce piece coconut cream? All I know as coconut cream is the stuff to make piña coladas.

I would assume plain chocolate as unsweetened.

Regards,

Pie Lady wrote:Here's another one:
2-ounce piece coconut cream? All I know as coconut cream is the stuff to make piña coladas.

Did you figure this one out? The words "piece" and "cream" don't go together in my mind, one being solid and one being liquid. Is it for a batter?

I'm speculating that coconut cream might be a term for coconut oil, which is sort of solid at room temp.

It would probably help to understand where the recipes are from-historic, foreign cookbook, etc.

If you don't shake a can of coconut milk, the stuff floating on the top is the coconut cream... not exactly coconut oil. It's just concentrated coconut milk, and will mix back into the rest after you shake it. You can just scoop it off the top, or you can buy it on its own. Here's more about coconut cream.

I found a description of plain chocolate as dark chocolate(sweetened chocolate with no milk). It is not the same as baking (unsweetened) chocolate. It seems to be a British term; would your recipe happen to be from the UK?

mamagotcha wrote:I found a description of plain chocolate as dark chocolate(sweetened chocolate with no milk). It is not the same as baking (unsweetened) chocolate. It seems to be a British term; would your recipe happen to be from the UK?

That's an interesting angle, if the recipe was from the UK. It is also the issue of someone not being specific in a recipe ingredient list.

Regards,

I thought this book was British, as many of the recipes sounded that way and one, so far, gave an oven temp as F/Mark/C. But the copyright has NY all over it. Then I noticed that the book was copyrighted under an imprint of Anness Publishing, which is indeed in Leicester. It is The Cook's Encyclopedia of Chocolate, and it was published in the 90s.

The recipe with the coconut piece is for a Chocolate Coconut Roulade. The method is: "To make the filling, whisk the [heavy] cream with the whiskey in a bowl until the mixture just holds its shape, grate the coconut cream and stir in with the sugar."

Now I wonder if coconut cream is a Britishism for the meat of the coconut, which sounds more like something you would grate.

Looks like there is a difference between coconut cream and cream of coconut
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-coconut-cream.htm

"To produce coconut cream, the coconut milk is allowed to stand for at least 24 hours in a chilled environment. The solid section which rises to the top is the coconut cream, and it can be skimmed off and placed in a new container, leaving light coconut milk behind. Coconut cream is essentially a highly concentrated form of coconut milk with very little water."

"Cream of coconut is made by pureeing coconut flesh to make a highly concentrated product with almost no water. It is extremely rich, very dense, and often hard because it is solid at room temperature, and it hardens up in cool weather or in dry conditions. Blocks of cream of coconut can be found for sale at some Asian grocers, and people with very powerful blenders can also make this coconut product at home."