Balance of Food

Homemade whipped cream is great and a lot of work

Pumpkin pie season so whipped cream is in our thoughts.

I usually use whipped cream to do a deconstructed strawberry shortcake in early summer with shortbread cookies.

We love whipped cream on all sorts of foods from pies to fruit. We even appreciate the use of whipped cream in boosting a couple's sex life.

There are generally 2 ways to get whipped cream: buy the ready-made canisters or buy heavy whipping cream and whip your own.

Making homemade whipped cream involves a bit of work. You get a great product in the end. The ready-made whipped cream requires no work.

Here is where the confusion: the ready-made versions are "watered down" with skim milk. Even the Trader Joe's version has skim milk.

Whipped cream means rich and decadent. I want whole milk in my whipped cream, not skim milk. Sounds like a really bad "meh" compromise where nobody wins.

There is a logic to using skim milk in a processed whipped cream from what little I have read. I also don't put in carrageenan, which comes from red seaweed, and seems to be part of the process of the cream within the canister.

When your humble narrator whips cream at home, I put in some sugar. I don't think to put in milk, not even whole milk. I read where some people put vanilla in a homemade whipped cream. That feels decadent.

Would love a warning when your store-brought whipped cream is about to run out. Shaking the container is valuable but not too accurate. Make your own whipped cream and you know how much you have left in the container.

The ready made is fun to dispense but I do love the mouthfeel of the freshly whipped cream.

BalanceofFood.com holidays coverage

One key tool in making homemade whipped cream: have a mixer where you don't have to hold the bowl for several minutes while the old school beaters do their work.

If you are struggling with that task, making a pre-holiday purchase wouldn't be the worst idea. Your humble narrator still does it old school but wishes for a bigger kitchen and a tool to make that happen.

photos credit: me

PepsiCo goes Starry to replace Sierra Mist, which was great in a mocktail mojito

The new Starry ads are "crisp, clear" about a new lemon-lime flavored soft drink. The Gen Z aimed ads don't disclose its large parent company, PepsiCo.

The worst part is that Starry, which contains high-fructose corn syrup, replaces Sierra Mist, which was sweetened using cane sugar.

PepsiCo is letting us know Starry is a thing with way more energy and pep than the company used to promote Sierra Mist. Use little to no marketing with Sierra Mist and wonder why a brand has falling share numbers.

Sprite and 7UP are the primary contenders in the lemon-lime flavored soft drink market. Finding cane sugar versions (e.g., Mexico) is a lot more difficult than finding Mexican Coca-Cola in the United States. 7UP changed its U.S. formula (not factoring in sweeteners) so who knows what a Mexican 7UP would taste like.

Your humble narrator has spent too much time this summer trying mocktails in a can. Ugh. The only mocktail I generally like is a homemade mock mojito. The joy of Sierra Mist was the ease in making a homemade mock mojito.

Mexican versions are the best big-brand option for a mock mojito, if you can find a Sprite and 7UP hecho en Mexico. The mocktail version of a mojito doesn't need a big brand lemon-lime flavored soft drink. You can find ginger beer or root beer made with cane sugar a lot easier than the lemon-lime flavor variety with cane sugar.

Sierra Mist was special in that the product was easy to find and buy in a regular grocery store. Kudos to PepsiCo for making Sierra Mist with cane sugar but bad on them to lower the presence of the drink until putting the soda pop out to pasture. Given the near conglomerate control of the vast majority of soda sales, selling Sierra Mist to a smaller company would never happen.

If you wondered what happened to Sierra Mist, let's check in with Delish.com and its explanation of the soda's recent history:

The soda was first made with high fructose corn syrup, then pivoted to the cane sugar-based Sierra Mist Natural in 2010. Then PepsiCo added stevia to the Sierra Mist formula in 2014, only to switch back to (high fructose) corn syrup and rebrand as Mist Twst two years later.

Then, as a last ditch effort, the soda's recipe changed back to cane sugar once again and re-adopted its original name. While many consumers opted for Sierra Mist to minimize their consumption of high fructose corn syrup, Sprite always remained king.

No wonder Sierra Mist consumers were lost and confused.

Gen Z and Millennials grew up on high-fructose corn syrup in their soft drinks. A lot of the younger Gen X kids also only know high-fructose corn syrup in their soft drinks. Thank goodness for older Gen X kids, who knew a better world as children: actual sugar in soft drinks.

Soft drink companies know the HFCS versions lead to more sales because those versions can't quench a thirst like the cane sugar versions. We've seen Dr. Pepper (owners of 7UP) fight the Dublin, TX plant that produced Dublin Dr. Pepper. Mexican Coca-Cola is made by Coca-Cola but the parent company doesn't promote that version in the United States.

The Mexican versions are in U.S. stores because of high consumer demand. Sierra Mist was easier to find so it couldn't last too long.

Bars should add good quality fruit and vegetable juices for better mocktails

BalanceofFood.com high-fructose corn syrup coverage

The soft drink companies may hate soft drink taxes but unfortunately the taxes applied to all soft drinks, including those made with cane sugar. Besides not tasting as good, the HFCS versions make more of a profit for the soft drink companies because of the heavy federal subsidies for corn products, making HFCS far cheaper than actual sugar.

The U.S. market deserved a better version of Sierra Mist, a crafted lemon-lime flavored soft drink, a ginger beer type precision. Sierra Mist was likely as good as the U.S. could handle, even as Americans deserved a more flavorful lemon-lime soda.

photo credit: Starry/PepsiCo