Sparkle Kitchen: Cloudberry Cream
In this week's The Willowbee Tree story “Feeding the Storm”, Clancy is mad. His day has not gone well at all and instead of saying anything to anyone, he has only gotten more and more upset. Finally the Willow Tree takes him to the coast of Newfoundland, Canada where a Newfoundland wolf shows him how the storm inside needs to be expressed and fed in order to pass.
While the wolf and Clancy's discussion of being “fed” was, of course, metaphorical, if I could choose something to be fed in Newfoundland, I would love to try a handful of freshly picked cloudberries.
With a name that dreamy, cloudberries almost sound made up, don't they?
They're real, but rare—a golden-colored, arctic berry that is mostly wild and only grows a few months of the year. They taste like raspberries but less brazen, and with a hint of something wine-like.
For us “southerners”—that is, everyone below Northern Maine or Scandinavia, generally speaking—cloudberries are almost always only available in jam form. Luckily, jam works just as well for one of the most traditional uses for a cloudberries—cloudberry cream.
The recipe below may need to be tweaked depending on what kind of cloudberry jam you can find. I was able to find a jar without a lot of added sweetener and I liked it just fine without adding any extra sugar of my own. Your mileage may vary. Just taste the cream after you've whipped in the jam, and add extra sugar a teaspoon at a time until you love what you're tasting.
Additionally, if cloudberry jam is prohibitively expensive where you are, try subbing raspberry jam—it's not quite the same, but it will still be good.
Once your cloudberry cream is finished, you can eat it plain, or use it anywhere you would use whipped cream—between layers of a cake, on ice cream, or — as we did — on top of waffles.
Ingredients
8 ounces (½ pint) heavy whipping cream
½ cup cloudberry jam
additional sugar, to taste (optional)
Directions
Pour the cream into the bowl of a stand mixer and whip until it's lovely and stiff—about 5 minutes. Then, add the jam and whip for about 30 seconds more. Now, taste the cream. If you like it, you're all done. If you want it sweeter, whip in extra sugar—a teaspoon at a time—until you're happy with it.
Eat your cloudberry cream by the spoonful, or use it anywhere you would normally use whipped cream.
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About the Author
Meryl Carver-Allmond
The Sparkle Kitchen Series is created by Meryl Carver-Allmond.
Meryl lives in a hundred-year-old house near the prairie with her sweet husband, two preschoolers, one puppy, one gecko, and about ten chickens. While she's been writing since she could pick up a pen, in recent years she's discovered the joy of photography, too. She feels lucky to be able to combine those skills, along with a third passion — showing people that cooking for themselves can be healthy and fun — in her Sparkle Kitchen posts.
