Plastic Cream

Plastic cream is a highly viscous product than any other type of cream. It resembles to paste in texture. It contains fat between 60-85 %. However it differs from butter in that it is still a fat in water type emulsion in spite of containing fat near or equal to butter. The plastic cream is used directly for the manufacture of butter oil or in the preparation of standardized milk. It may also replace use of butter oil in the preparation of recombined milk. Plastic cream can be prepared by any of the following methods.

i. Re-separation of normal cream containing 30-40% fat in a normal cream separator.

ii. Separating milk in a specially designed plastic cream separator to yield high fat cream.

For preparation of plastic cream by any of the above two methods, it is essential to pasteurize the initial product i.e. cream and milk. In case of milk it is heated before separation to about 50°C and then separated. Pasteurization of cream is done by heating to a temperature of about 74°C for 30 minutes followed by cooling to 60-66°C before re-separation. Resulting products of the separation will be plastic cream and skim milk. The cream is then packaged and stored for further use.