Ingredients

　　

Need some, have none

Step 1

If you need sweet cream and have sour, baking soda sweetens sour cream. So add a pinch of soda to some sour cream and keep adding more, slowly, until the cream reaches the desired degree of sweetness. Start with a tiny, tiny pinch. A teaspoon per pint is the most you’d ever want to add, and rarely that much.

　　

Step 2

Or you can use powdered milk made with less water than usual, or by adding milk to the powder instead of water.

　　

Step 3

But why aren’t you using your emergency can of evaporated milk? Just thought you might need a reminder—you did set those emergency supplies aside, didn’t you? For whipped cream, refrigerate both the milk and your beaters and then whip. Add sugar as desired. A word of warning, though: this works best served on cold desserts. If you put your nicely whipped evaporated milk on, say, a slice of warm pie, it will rapidly revert to its liquid state. You can also just slightly dilute the milk as a substitute for cream.

　　

Sour

Step 4

Bet you can guess if you’ve read the rest of the section: a pinch of baking soda will sweeten sour cream.

　　Cooks' Note

　　See also milk; sour cream; whipped cream

　　How to Repair Food, Third Edition