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I often see a recipe listing heavy cream, double cream, light cream. In my area, we have "heavy whipping cream". How does this compare to the other categories, and what adjustments should I do if it calls for a cream I do not have access to? Or will it work fine just using heavy whipping cream in all cases other creams (double, light, etc) is called for?

Hi MarciK - EYB is an international site so you will see ingredients listed that you don't recognize. For that reason we link ingredients that are the same but named differently. So heavy cream and double cream are linked although double cream is thicker and less aerated when whipped. Heavy whipping cream and thick cream are also linked to those. Light cream is linked to single cream, thin cream and 5% cream.

When you search by one ingredient you will see recipes with all the linked ingredients.

To the best of my knowledge:

• double cream is the British term for heavy or whipping cream; whipping cream is 30% butterfat, heavy whipping cream is 36% butterfat; double cream is 48% butterfat


• light cream (single cream) is 20% butterfat (range 18-30%); half-and-half (12% - range 10.5-18%) works well

Basically if you distinquish between whipping cream and half-and-half you have everything necessary for recipes to work ... the rest is flavor, texture, and calories.

Is there a way to make a heavy whipping cream into a double cream or light cream? We don't have all those specific distinctions in the US. My understnding is I can use heavy whipping cream for anything that says heavy/double/etc & I can use half & half for anything that says light? I have a lot of English cookbooks, so I come across this a lot.

Having lived in both the UK and USA and having many cookbooks from both country, I use heavy cream (or heavy whipping cream) where double cream is called for in a recipe. I wouldn't sub single cream with half-and-half but adding some heavy cream to half-and-half should work.