Whip It
Welcome back. And to those whose next question is, “To what?” let me answer by saying “I’m not sure.” Something involving coffee and employment and the episodic intelligence of a Scooby Doo comic, though I try to include some sort of useful information each week. So anyway, hi.
Days often have themes, if you’ve ever noticed. The summer of grade 5 had a strong tree-climbing motif if memory serves, and my 30th birthday had a theme that could have been described using words such as “last ten years” and “blimey waste.” Today’s theme however, given a lengthy shift at the coffee bar, was whipped cream. It may have been the weather. It is late March after all and a pair of beautiful sunny Toronto days have brought new patrons out of hiding. Anyone familiar enough with industries of consumption know how outside conditions can affect inside sales. People are ordering summer beverages, cooler beverages, beverages that smile with a dollop of white fluff on top. Today I prepared a drink called a Fruizzi, a mixture of fruit juices, milk and ice which when blended produces a smooth river of velvety bliss, a tropical wellspring of hope. Basically a slushie with moo juice. I heaped it up well beyond the rim and capped it with a dome lid, as is the practice. Then a voice. Whenever you’ve completed an order, there’s always a voice. “….And whipped cream please.” Oh. In the case of this particular drink, whipped cream isn’t usually used. With others, it makes more sense. Anything with chocolate? Yes. Caramel? Not unheard of. Espresso? Why not. An espresso con pana is a shot covered with a touch of the fluff to seal in the flavor. Fruit drinks? No, but like I said, springtime does things to people. I obliged. Whip is a simple feel-good addition I don’t mind using. Besides easing the pain of a customer’s latest parking ticket or beefs with an absentee landlord, whipped cream allows me to cover up the odd error in beverage preparation. Then why do I feel like a handicapped moose whenever someone requests it?
The reason has partly to do with my skills. In learning the menu at a coffee house that primarily serves beverages, you must know both the ingredients and the assembly of. After three weeks, I feel very comfortable with each of these (I no longer spray patrons with glass cleaner when they order a red-eye. Joke), though how a drink is prepared may change somewhat if anything whipped is to be added. This I don’t always do. For example, a latte with a healthy top layer of foam will hold whip longer and steadier than a latte without. Whip on bare hot liquid will quickly melt and disappear from sight, leaving an older customer with narrowed eyebrows and a child bawling like….a child. Also, be aware of how full the cup or mug is before adding the whip. This prevents overflows. A server may often find him or herself following the Law of Fulfillment, an urge to win a customer’s approval by topping up drinks to the brim. Adding whip to a fuller cup ups the odds of having to wipe off a patron’s cup with napkins before you hand it off to them, red faced.
A customer today asked whether our whipped cream was 35% or not. I would have replied by asking what the other 65% was, but I wasn’t entirely sure about the first 35. Like the foods they accompany, cream comes in many varieties, from the sweet heavy creams available in specialty stores to the light whipping creams available at the local grocer. Heaviness indicates a higher fat content. The common half-and-half found in most restaurants and coffee houses contains 10-12% fat, whereas whipping creams designated as heavy will be 36% or more. Any liquid cream with over 30% fat content is capable of being made into whip. Much of the whip used in pastries and fillings will be from creams on the higher fat end. These are both thicker and more stable. During the conversion process itself, volume will approximately double due to the addition of air held within the cream’s fat droplets. Yum.
It seems then, our customer had inquired about light whipping cream, which contains between 30% and 36% fat. We had none. What we did have however was pressurized whipped cream, powered by a fascinating gas called nitrous oxide. In a can of whip, nitrous oxide remains dissolved in the fat until it’s shaken and sprayed. It then turns to a gaseous form and creates the foam we all lick our lips over. Since its discovery in the late 1700s, nitrous oxide has found many uses: general anaesthetic, pain relief during childbirth, displacement of staleness in potato chip packaging, engine power bursts a la Mad Max, global warming, and…euphoric inhalant. So much for the weather theory. No worries though. It’s a coffee shop, not a Grateful Dead concert. Cans are disposed of where they can do no harm to themselves or others. Besides, I’m here to serve and protect. That’s what baristas do.
