Heavy Cream Substitute

When it comes to adding richness to saucy dishes, there's nothing better than a heavy splash of cream to make even the most healthy vegetables a little more indulgent. We love it in our classic creamed spinach, and our irresistible creamy chicken marsala just wouldn't be the same without it.

But there comes a day when the grocery store is out, or you just don't feel like leaving the house for a single missing ingredient. When that day comes, we've got you covered with this 2-ingredient alternative.

Heavy cream vs. milk

Straight from the cow, unpasteurized raw milk will separate into two layers: a higher-fat cream layer that rises to the top, and a layer of milk that sits below it. Cream contains higher levels of saturated fat, which solidifies when chilled and traps air bubbles when agitated, resulting in beautiful clouds of whipped cream when beaten just the right amount. The fat content of heavy cream or whipping cream hovers around 35%, while whole milk is only 3.5% fat by weight. This means that 1 cup of heavy cream has about 10x the amount of fat as 1 cup of whole milk!

Butter to the rescue

When over-whipped, cream breaks and separates into butter and buttermilk. Butter has a fat content that hovers at 80%, which explains why it makes everything taste so much better. Its high fat content is exactly what we need to emulsify into milk in order to create a heavy cream substitute. After staring at some nutrition labels on a milk carton, a heavy cream carton, and a box of butter, I punched some numbers into my calculator from the 8th grade and came up with the best ratio of whole milk to butter to approximate the fat content of heavy cream.

The caveat

Here's the disclaimer: this substitute is not perfect. Even though we are reintroducing fat content back into milk to mimic cream, we cannot create a perfect emulsion between the milk and the butter to create a homogenized cream. In the production of butter, membranes of fat globules that act as emulsifiers are destroyed as the cream is churned—without these membranes in place, we have no existing emulsifiers to hold the fat (butter) and the water (milk) together. 

Fear not, dear reader! We promise this is a great substitute for savory applications like fettucine alfredo, because the cooking process will help the two become one, yielding a silky smooth sauce just like good old heavy cream would. This disclaimer applies more to sweet applications, especially if you are hoping to use this substitute for making whipped cream. To amp up the emulsifying power, we add a binder in the form of powdered sugar in order for the whipped cream to hold its shape. Powdered sugar often contains either cornstarch or tapioca starch, which will help stabilize and give body to our whipped cream. Once whipped, use it immediately—like Cinderella, once the clock strikes midnight, the carriage will revert back into a pumpkin and your whipped topping will slowly deflate back into cream.

Half and half, Greek yogurt, sour cream, and other substitutes

If you have other dairy products on hand and aren't too concerned about duplicating heavy cream perfectly, there are a variety of potential substitutes you can use. Half and half is literally half cream and half milk, and its fat content wavers between 10% to 18%, depending on the brand. You can easily use half and half in place of cream on its own for a lower-fat option, or add in 1 or 2 tablespoons butter per 1/2 cup of half and half to make up for the missing fat. Greek yogurt is another good lower-fat option, and can be mixed with a couple tablespoons of milk to dilute its texture down to mimic cream. Likewise, sour cream, crème fraîche, mascarpone, and even cream cheese can all stand in for cream in a pinch, especially in savory applications. These are very young, unaged, fresh cheeses that are rich, fatty, and also a little bit tart, making them perfect for bright creamy dishes like lemony asparagus pasta and creamy lemon Parmesan chicken.

Leave us a comment below to let us know how this substitution worked for you!