Smooth, cool, comforting, creamy heavy cream

I have a friend who loves brown sugar. As in loves it so much she eats it by the spoonful (occasionally, not all the time). I feel that way about heavy cream. I love heavy cream. No, I looooove heavy cream.

I was reminded of this just this morning when I spotted the left-over open container of it in the fridge from last night’s dinner. And just like that, the morning was better. I’m not sure which part exactly provided the extreme delight: the heavy cream itself or simply the recollection of how much I love heavy cream.

Smooth, cool, comforting, creamy heavy cream.

I also have been known to eat heavy cream by the spoonful. 3 spoonfuls at a time sometimes. Sometimes straight up. Sometimes with a little bit of sugar sprinkled over the top (my preferred method). It’s truly a guilty pleasure that I do in fact feel guilty about. Sorta.

But this morning, I didn’t eat it by the spoonful. I ate it poured over my oatmeal. I drizzled it over the top and watched it make a shallow pool on the bottom of the bowl. I sprinkled in some brown sugar and blueberries, and took my first bite with a disproportionate amount of heavy cream to oatmeal. Mmm, a treat indeed.

I have seen first-hand on many occasions how heavy cream makes things insanely better. My best friend Jenni has a family apple pie recipe that calls for a cup of heavy cream poured over the top of the apple mixture before the pie is baked, and I’m telling you, that pie is different from the rest of the apple pies out there. Everyone always comments on how good that pie is. And I always tell them that it has a cup of heavy cream in it. And you see them briefly process this, have an a-ha moment, and instantly get it. Once, when I realized midway through making chili that I didn’t have any chili powder, I took my Italian sausage / onion / red pepper / tomato sauce mixture, poured in a lot of heavy cream (and parm), and created a recipe appropriately named “chili pasta” by my husband that he now frequently begs me to make.

Okay, so not surprising, right, that a huge dose of heavy cream does great things. But you know what? A little goes a long way too. A little dash of heavy cream sure makes coffee feel a lot more luxurious. Even in its whipped form, a little bit of heavy cream is just what you need to be able to polish off a rich chocolate pot de crème.

And a little bit on a spoon aint bad either.