Homemade Clotted Cream
Clotted Cream is deliciously creamy and the essential companion to a batch of British scones. You don't have to go to England to enjoy your tea-time treats though, because it is so easy to make at home!
What is clotted cream?
Clotted cream is a staple on British tea-time tables. You'll find it served in a little dish right alongside your scones (or very traditionally, Cornish 'splits', a type of yeast bun).
It is a thick, creamy, white spread, with the consistency of softened cream cheese. It is ever so slightly sweet, but mostly just incredibly creamy. Like a good, unsalted butter.
But so much more.
Devonshire cream vs clotted cream
Sometimes you may hear "clotted cream" called "Devonshire cream" or "Cornish cream". It really all depends on the region you are in.
The making of clotted cream started in Devon as a way to separate the fat from milk to make butter. Centuries later in Cornwall, it became popular to use the cream on its own. At that time, clotted cream and butter were the most popular ways to preserve milk.
One of our readers sent us a wonderful insight into clotted cream making, that is worth sharing. Angela spent her childhood during WWII at Callington with her grandparents who were retired farmers on the Devon/Cornwall border. She explained that the real difference between clotted cream in Devon and Cornwall came down to the process.
She stated,
"Devon cream was made by putting the full milk straight from the cow into a large enamel pan. It was then rested overnight to allow the fat to rise to the top. Then the pan was placed on the range over a pan of simmering water until the cream became a crust. (The milk must not boil!) It was then removed and allowed to become cold in the pantry - no fridges then.
When cold, the thick crust was carefully scooped off the top of the milk and put in a cream dish ready for use. The remaining fatless milk was used for cooking and on farms, surplus skim milk was used to feed pigs etc.
This was the method we used as we no longer had the farm. Just 2 bottles of unpasteurized full cream milk produced enough cream for splits, stewed fruit or junket.
Cornish clotted cream was made as follows - The full milk was poured through a separator. This was a rather complicated piece of mechanical equipment used on farms to separate the fat from the milk.
The full cream was then put into the enamel pan and very slowly heated on the stove until it thickened from top to bottom. No skimming needed. When cold, it could all be eaten!
This is what can be bought in supermarkets today."
Many thanks to Angela for sharing her knowledge and family heritage story with us!
Of course, those in Devon and Cornwall each claim that their cream is superior.
I guess we'll have to take a trip to decide for ourselves!
Ingredients
The ingredient list here couldn't be any shorter. You just need to get yourself some heavy cream.
However, the hardest part about making clotted cream might just be finding the cream.
You see, for best results, you need to start with heavy cream that has not been ultra-pasteurized for a longer shelf life.
Simply look for a carton of heavy cream that does not say "ultra-pasteurized", and you're good to go!
Can I use ultra pasteurized cream?
Finding non-ultra-pasteurized cream is becoming more and more difficult in the States, so many of our readers have asked if they can use ultra-pasteurized cream in this recipe.
Luckily, the answer is yes (most of the time). Some of our readers have had luck using ultra-pasteurized cream. However, because of what the ultra-pasteurization process does to the protein and fat molecules in the cream, you will get less clotted cream if you start with ultra-pasteurized cream than if you can find some that isn't.
How to make clotted cream
Clotted describes the look of the cream when it is heated ever-so-gently so that the fat separates to the top and clings together.
After you find your cream, the second hardest part of making clotted cream is the wait.
This is not a quick process.
The cream has to be heated slowly for 12 hours, which we find easiest to do overnight. Then it is cooled for another 8 hours (or over the next night).
Finally, you separate the cream from the liquid, and you have the spread that you have been waiting for.
It might take a long time, but it's mostly hands-off.
And it's SO worth the wait!
Can you make clotted cream in the slow cooker?
This is a question that we get often from our readers, so we did some testing to find out.
The answer is yes you can! Have a look at our recipe and process for making clotted cream in the slow cooker.
There are also some nice tips and tricks about making clotted cream in general over there, so even if you're thinking about making it using this oven method, take a look over there for the tips!
How to store the finished product
You will want to store your clotted cream in an airtight container in your refrigerator. For best storage, store it a place in your fridge that stays a consistent, cool temperature - so not in the door. Closer to the middle is where we like to keep it.
How long does homemade clotted cream last?
Your homemade clotted cream will stay fresh for about 3-4 days if properly stored in the refrigerator. After that, it may start to lose its consistency.
However, if you happen to let your clotted cream get just a bit past its prime and the texture just isn't quite right you can always use it to make fudge or ice cream.
How to use clotted cream
The traditional use for clotted cream is on scones, with jam, served with tea.
However, if you find yourself with an excess of clotted cream and no scones, you can always serve it with Irish soda bread, muffins, apple pie, a fruit tart, or any dessert or sweet bread of your choosing. It also makes a nice fruit topping.
Basically, you can use it any way you would typically use whipped cream or butter.
Savory uses for clotted cream
Clotted cream typically lends itself to sweeter uses: spread on scones (or "splits" as Angela pointed out to us were more common where she was growing up) with some jam.
However, it is rich and creamy and you can use it for savory applications as well.
We think it would be delicious as a veggie dip or spread on a cucumber slice as an appetizer.
You could also add it to mashed potatoes, risotto, or eggs to give them extra creaminess, much like you would butter. Or you could add it to soups or sauces to give them a creamy boost.
What's the difference between clotted cream and whipped cream?
While at first, a bowl of clotted cream might look similar to whipped cream. But once you take a taste, you'll know the difference.
Both start with the same basic ingredient: heavy cream. But, for whipped cream, you whip that cream into light and fluffy pillows. Often you'll add sweetener and possibly a flavoring, like vanilla, to whipped cream as well.
Clotted cream, on the other hand, is heated and separated, as we'll go into more detail below. This process produces a thicker, creamy substance.
Another difference is that clotted cream is typically not sweetened. People love it for the creamy texture it adds, similar to butter, rather than a particular sweetness or flavor.
What's the difference between clotted cream and butter?
So, if it has a thicker consistency and is more savory, how is clotted cream different from butter?
Again, it comes down to the process.
Butter is made by churning (or whipping) cream. So, if you over-whip your whipped cream, you'll end up with nice, whipped butter.
Clotted cream, again, has to do with the separation of the fat in your cream.
Our reader Angela pointed out to us that the making of butter in a churn took additional time and hard work. So making clotted cream was a much easier option.
What to do with the leftover whey from making clotted cream?
When you make clotted cream, you will be left with a thin, milky liquid below the clotted cream.
That liquid is basically skim milk, and while we don't think it has the best flavor for drinking, it is perfectly good for baking.
You can use it in any baking recipe that calls for milk. Our favorite way to use it is to make a batch of British scones.
However, it would also work well to make this Brazilian French toast or this Finnish braided bread.
Can you freeze clotted cream?
Frozen dairy tends to lose its thickness and creamy texture, so we wouldn't recommend freezing homemade clotted cream. (We'd use it in some of the ways suggested above first.)
That being said, we have heard of some people having luck freezing clotted cream in an airtight container, if it is thawed overnight in the refrigerator before you would like to use it.
If you'd like to try this, we'd suggest starting with a small test batch to see how you like the results.
Buying jars of imported clotted cream can get quite pricey. But you don't have to worry about that anymore!
Homemade Clotted Cream
To make clotted cream, you will want to start the process 3 days before you plan to serve your cream. It sounds like a lot of time, but most of the process is done while you sleep!
Ingredients
- 2 c (237 ml) heavy cream, (not ultra-pasteurized)
Instructions
Day 1
- Preheat your oven to 170-180F.
- Pour the cream into a shallow casserole dish or glass baking dish. (The cream should only come up the sides about 1-2 inches. The key here is to have a lot of surface area.)
- Place the cream in the oven for 12 hours, uncovered. (This works great overnight.**)
Day 2
- After heating for 12 hours, the cream will develop a skin. Carefully remove the dish from the oven and let it cool to room temperature. Once cool, cover the dish and refrigerate it for 8 hours (or overnight again).
Day 3
- After chilled, gently skim the thick layer of clotted cream from the surface, leaving the thinner liquid behind. (It will feel like you’re pulling a layer of slightly softened ice cream from the top of a layer of milk*. The skin in fine, it will soften as it is mixed into the cream.)
- Gently stir the skimmed clotted cream to create a smooth texture. (If your cream is too thick for your liking, you can always stir a little bit of the thin liquid back into your cream, until it reaches your desired consistency.)
- Store the clotted cream in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. (Clotted cream can also be frozen and thawed in the refrigerator, if desired.)
Notes
*The leftover liquid can be used like milk. It’s great for baking!
** Oven note #1: Some ovens have a safety feature that shuts them off after extended periods of time. If this is your oven, you may want to do the clotting step during the day, when you can make sure your oven stays on and at a low temperature.
Oven note #2: We have a lot of readers who are discovering as they try this recipe that their oven runs hot. After 12 hours in the oven, their cream has developed a dark brown skin. The skin on your cream should only be a pale tan if it starts to darken. If you think your oven may run hot, check your cream after 8 hours and again after 10 hours to see if the top is darkening. If it is, you may need to cycle your oven between off and on to keep a temperature that is not too hot for the cream. (As a side note, the darkened top on the cream does not mean it is ruined. It simply means your finished cream will have a bit of a deeper flavor, and it will most likely have some flecks of brown and not be a pure creamy white.)
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
16Serving Size:
1 gAmount Per Serving: Calories: 101
Sarah founded Curious in 2010 as a way to save her recipe creations and share culinary experiences. Her love for cultural cuisines was instilled early by her French Canadian Grandmother. Her experience in the kitchen and in recipe development comes from over 10 years working in professional kitchens. She has traveled extensively and enjoys bringing the flavors of her travels back to create easy-to-make recipes.
Just thought my experience may help someone. My local dairy was out of raw cream and not having time to wait, I used ultra pasteurized heavy whipping cream from the grocery store since its the only thing I could find. I cooked it 10 hours and it started turning golden, so I went through the chilling process. What I got was an entire pan of solid, no liquid, and thicker than the clotted cream I remember, closer to cold butter in texture-seemed almost dehydrated. I scraped it out and beat it in the mixer with some more cream to loosen it. (It was way too thick to stir by hand) I think its heavier than it should be but it tastes good and the texture is smooth, not lumpy. Maybe not perfect, but worth a try if you have limited availability of cream.
Thanks for sharing!
Worked a treat ... Delicious!!!
Thank you
So glad you enjoyed it!
Hello there, I can remember having to take apart and clean the cream separator, it seemed like there were hundreds of those little cones, all needing a thorough clean! Ours was hand cranked. Anyway, these days I now live in Australia and make my own cream sometimes. My method is different, I pour the cream in to a small flat bottomed casserole dish and cook the cream over a pan of very gently simmering water, when the top changes colour and starts to crinkle ... after maybe 45 minutes (totally dependant on the volume of cream) carefully remove it and cool, let it get cold in the fridge and scoop it out.
For those in Australia I use pouring cream and have even made it with our thickened cream
Thanks so much for sharing! We will have to try this method!
Can you please help me figure out what went wrong? I poured the cream into ceramic baking dishes but maybe the volume was too shallow? My oven temp was pretty steady all day. I refrigerated the results, and when I tried to skim the cream it was covered in a thick skin that was very sticky. When I tried to stir it it became more liquid. Its got a nice roasted flavor but it is basically liquid with thick sticky lumps. Should it put it in a saucepan to boil down? I'm not sure if I can fix it. Thank you!
Hi Kelsey. It sounds like you got the skin but not the clotted cream that should be under the skin. Did you happen to use Ultra High Temp pasteurized (UHT) cream? This sounds like a problem that would come from that.
@Kelsey,
Your skin developed sooner than your cream thickened so your oven was too hot and depth of cream too shallow. You kinda made a toffee skin?
So just try to adjust the temp down in oven, pour 2 inches in dish and see what happens.
Enjoy!
I would say I will be excited to try this recipe to see how it comes out differently than heating over the stove at a very low temperature with a large pan. I assume it might be easier overall because you don't have to do work removing many small batches from the pan bottom and easier to control temperature, but if you're worried about energy costs and time, I like the stovetop!
Thanks for sharing Amy. We will have to give the stove top method a try to see how it compares!
Hi, so as I understand it, evaporation needs to happen - would this then be suitable to be done in a dehydrator? Would love to make this once I've found non uht cream with enough fat content.... Dearly miss scones and clotted cream!
Hi Emma. We haven't tried this in a dehydrator, but if your dehydrator could keep the cream around 170-180F, I don't see why it wouldn't work. If you give it a try that way, do let us know how it turns out for you.
My clotted cream ended up very liquid; I must have messed up skimming it. Do you have any suggestions to thicken it again?
Hi Michelle. If you went through the whole process, but there was only a little thick clotted cream on the top, it was likely the type of cream you used. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do at that point. But, the thin liquid is still good to use in place of milk for baking.
All other recipes for clotted cream specify a cooking time of 2 hours in a water bath, then a cooling time of 12 hours. Why does it take so long in the oven?
Hi Lennart. I'm not sure where you are looking, but we have never seen an authentic clotted cream recipe that only takes 2 hours of cooking.
Hello! I bought raw milk from a local dairy farm and "baked" it in my oven for 12 hours at 180 degrees. When it came out, it has a very thin layer of skin, think pudding skin thin. Now it's been refrigerated and it is so very much liquid with just a thin layer of skin.
What did I do wrong? Can this be salvaged??
Hi Sharon. Are you saying that after refrigerating there was no thicker clotted cream, just a thin skin and the liquid?
@Sharon, You should use heavy cream, not milk.
I made a mistake and started skimming the cream before chilling. What do I do?
Hi Zelle. I would try pouring the cream back into the container and chilling from there. Although, I have never encountered this issue or looked into how skimming first may impact the finished cream. Do stop back and let us know how it turns out for you, in case others have a similar issue.
Hi, sorry to correct you but the old traditional ways of making clotted cream weren’t done by separators. They didn’t become mainstream until the 1930’s and most ordinary people wouldn’t have possessed them. Cornish clotted cream tends to be more yellow because there’s more carotene in the grass in Cornwall. The way the Cornish made clotted cream before commercialisation was in a steam bath, or over a fire.
Hi Denise. Thank you for your note. As you can see, our reader was commenting from her experience in the WWII era, not claiming it was the original way done pre-1930s. It is quite possible that pre-1930s they were made by quite similar methods in each region.
I’ve tried this twice now and it keeps getting too brown for my liking… how long should I cycle between off and on? Should my oven be on for an hour and then off or longer cycles than that?
Hi Kaelyn. The target temperature for your oven is 170-180F. If you have an in-oven thermometer, that would help keep an eye on your temperature and let you know when to cycle it. (Our article about slow cooker clotted cream dives a bit more into the temperatures.) How long you cycle really depends on what temperature the oven is trying to get up to. If your lowest temperature is 200F, then you would want it on for shorter periods, just long enough to give the temperature a boost.
I made your recipe using Aldi's heavy whipping cream and it came out wonderful.
Wonderful! Thanks for sharing!
@Sue, Thank you! I have an Aldi's nearby and you solved my dilemma!
I really want to try this, being from England and living in the US. I really miss clotted cream on my scones!
However, I cannot seem to find heavy cream that is not ultra-pasturized!
Do you have any suggestions? We have Walmart, target, sprouts, natural grocers, united, costco, sams, and many others - so I’m sure it must be available somewhere!
Hi Helen. It does seem like the not ultra-pasteurized heavy cream is becoming harder and harder to find. Deans and Organic Valley both have a version of heavy cream that is simply pasteurized, but sometimes stores only carry the ultra-pasteurized version. I would check the natural grocers, you may have better luck there. That being said, many of our readers have had luck using the ultra-pasteurized cream. (We find the results to be inconsistent, but it may be worth a try for you, if it is all you can find.) I would just make sure you check the ingredients that there are not stabilizers (gums, etc) added and it is just cream, ultra-pasteurized or not. Do let us know what you find!
@Helen, honestly I use Walmart brand heavy whipping cream that's ultra-pasturized and it works for me. One day I'll try unpasteurized and see if there is a difference in taste but so far it's worked for me every time.
@Helen, I found some at Trader Joe’s!
Excellent info here, thanks guys!
Thank you!