Homemade Whipped Cream

My mother doesn't cook much. She can broil a steak, but she will mess up your birthday cake every couple of years (that's right, it's possible to mess up boxed cake mix). But the one thing I remember her making with me and my brothers was homemade whipped cream. She'd pour the heavy cream into a glass bowl, generously add sugar and vanilla extract and turn on the electric hand mixer, and in a matter of minutes we had whipped cream. My brothers and I would stick our fingers into the bowl, usually before she had enough time to grab it from us, and use the cream to top one treat or another for us. It's one of my fondest cooking memories, and one of the few that I have with my mother, or either of my brothers.

What I'm providing is not so much a recipe as it is a guideline for preparation. I generally made whipped cream in about a 1 cup yield, so it is enough to use within a few days, and relatively liberally. The sweetness can be adjusted accordingly.

Ingredients:

1/2 C heavy cream
3 T agave nectar or white sugar (I use agave because it's much easier to blend than granulated sugar)
1 t vanilla extract (sometimes I use almond to switch it up)

Method
Combine the heavy cream and vanilla extract and whip, either by hand with a whisk (my method) or with an electric mixer. When the cream has nearly doubled (within a few minutes) add the agave/sugar (by adding the sugar later, you allow the cream to rise to its full potential). Whip until soft peaks are formed. Stop at this point or the cream will lose the softness of this texture and begin to look grainy.