Whipped cream from milk powder

Question

Recently I saw a video that shows powdered milk can be whipped with cold water to make topping for cakes.

I did a research on Google and yes, some articles/blogs said that it can be whipped. I actually tried myself using half and half powdered milk and whipped it with a hand mixer but it didn’t work, running like normal milk. So I suppose not any type of milk works. Anyone has idea about that? I’d appreciate very much.

P.S.: Sorry for my English.

Answer 1

There are methods that whip very cold (up to semi-frozen) low-to-no-fat UHT milk to a whipped cream consistency using an immersion blender with the whipping disk. The key factors are temperature and fat content, for both, the lower the better.

I would not recommend using this product for a cake, because the stability is quite limited¹. Topping a dessert and serving it immediately is fine, any kind storage is not.

I would expect that a non-fat milk powder in cold water works just as well and I vaguely remember my mom doing something along that line a few decades ago.

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¹ Some sources suggest adding instant gelatine powder for stabilization, but as I have never tried it, I can’t confirm how well it works.

Answer 2

Whipped cream is a fat-based foam which forms when the tiny fat globules in cream coalesce. For this to happen, the lowest needed proportion of fat is 30%, but more is better. If you want to have a powdered product with which to make whipped cream, you have to buy powdered cream. Whipped milk won't work for that.

Milk can also create protein-based foams, as mentioned in Stephie's answer. They don't behave like whipped cream though. I don't know how feasible is to make them from powdered milk, and what the exact process will be - after your comment, this is likely to be what you are seeing. To get it, you would indeed have to use the exact process they are suggesting, with the proper amount of fat, and you will still not end up with whipped cream.

Answer 3

I would say the problem lays in what you understand as "whipped cream". First, yes you can beat the powdered milk to creamy consistency. The caveat - it's cream not Whipped cream.

Even making whipped cream from milk would require to churn the milk into cream (so beat out a lot of water and leave 30% fat content) and then WHIPPING the result.

Here are few things you can try:

• Make half a cup of milk from powdered milk. Boil with 1/5 cup of sugar and vanilla sugar. Let to cool. Meanwhile beat/whipp 1/8 of a cup of soft margerine (or butter) until it get fluffy. Combine with cooled milk. At the end add 2 cups of powdered milk.
• Make milk from powder with very cold water (even ice cubes if you have blender). Freeze that. Mix Caseine and flavour of your choosing (if vanilla don't add vanila extract but vanilla sugar). Add xanthan or guar AND gelatine (you can use powdered puddings or protein ice cream powders). Put in blender/mix and mix for 20 minutes (or until creamy consistency).

YOu can make it more "whipped" but that require freezing the rezult and then whipping with very areating tool. And it stay whipped for a short time as it get warmer.