The Closest Substitution For Heavy Cream In Cooking And Baking

When your recipe calls for heavy cream and there's none in sight upon opening the fridge, luckily there's a close substitute you can make with other ingredients. To throw together a makeshift (yet totally delicious) alternative to heavy cream, all you need to do is combine milk and melted unsalted butter. The resulting mixture — when whisked well to combine — will impart the creamy richness to match the high fat content of heavy cream when it's added to cooking and baking recipes.

As a general rule of thumb, you can melt ¼ cup (4 tablespoons, or half a stick) of butter and combine it with a ¾ cup of whole milk to yield 1 cup of heavy cream. This amount might be the perfect quantity for a hearty cream sauce to toss with pasta. To make a smaller quantity of your heavy cream substitute — for instance, to add to rich buttercream frosting — just add a couple of tablespoons of melted butter to ⅓ cup of milk. Just make sure the melted butter is completely cool before adding it to the milk, so the mixture doesn't curdle.

Heavy cream is made from a higher content of milk fat (at least 36%) compared to other liquid dairy products like whole (3.25% fat) or 2% milk. This fatty composition is why heavy cream imparts such a rich taste when added to coffee or whisked into creamy carbonara sauce. A small taste of heavy cream on its own will reveal itself to have a very thick and fatty mouthfeel.

Melted butter and milk work so well as a heavy cream substitute because you're basically adding milk fat to a lower-fat liquid dairy product. Butter is composed of at least 80% milk fat, so adding melted butter to whole milk will up the fat percentage and create a richer ingredient. If you have skim milk or low-fat milk in the fridge, you can also add melted butter to create a heavy cream substitute — just add in another teaspoon or two of butter to up the fat content.

You can also use half and half (which is equal parts whole milk and heavy cream) to make a heavy cream substitute. In a pinch, half and half — which contains between 10.5 to 18% milk fat — on its own can be swapped into most recipes that call for heavy cream. For an extra rich ingredient, of course, add in a couple of tablespoons of melted butter to further increase half and half's fat content.

There are also a few other suitable, functional, and delicious heavy cream alternatives to keep in your ingredient-swap toolbox. If you're looking to make your recipe dairy-free, you can use the same milk-plus-butter methodology to make a plant-based heavy cream substitute. Combine your favorite non-dairy milk with oil to increase the fat and creaminess, then swap it in for the heavy cream. You can also use solidified coconut cream.

However, it's worth noting that in terms of flavor and composition, melted butter and milk will give you the closest substitution for heavy cream. Heavy cream can be whipped in a stand mixer until solids form to make homemade butter, so it's not surprising that melted butter works best as a flavor and fat match. Unfortunately, melted butter and milk won't hold air or whip like heavy cream does, so to make a basic but foolproof whipped cream, you'll need to procure the real stuff. 

But you can use your melted butter and milk mixture — or any non-dairy variations — in most recipes, from classic penne alla vodka to cake. Pour in a bit of heavy cream substitute when making homemade ganache, biscuits, or an array of creamy soups. Perfect for a variety of culinary applications (just not whipped), hardly anyone who eats the dish will know you had to improvise a bit with the ingredients.