White chocolate panna cotta with raspberry sauce

I'm working on transferring over my old food to this blog, since I'm going to be food writing again. Watch this space, I'll be sharing my old recipes and thoughts, as well as my new ideas. Most of my old stuff is made with stock photography, since I didn't have a light box at the time. I'll tag my old recipes as retro, so you can tell the difference.

Any guesses on what this would cost at a posh restaurant?

Ok, guys. I have a confession to make. I know a bunch of you think I don't know how to make dessert. I've stated a bunch of times to my real life friends that I don't like sweet things, and that I can't bake dessert because I have no taste for it.

That's not entirely true.

This one is drawing on a lot of my cooking skills at once. Skill with alcohol, cream manipulation, and the most important aspect: plating. This dish really only works if you put it on the plate in an amazing, beautiful fashion. It's a high-class dessert, so serve it as such.

If this doesn't make you hungry, you're not human.

Ingredients:
1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup creme de cacao (not the dark stuff. White chocolate godiva liqueur would work too, really.)
3/4 cup sugar
1 package unflavored gelatin

sauce:
at least 1 1/2 cups of raspberries
2 tblsp triple sec
1 tsp lemon juice

Grab some ramekins. If you have no ramekins, buy ramekins. If you're feeling romantic, this looks amazing in a martini glass. Personally, though, I prefer it turned out.

Warm up a sauce pan, medium heat. Put the milk in the saucepan, and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Stir it until the gelatin breaks down and dissolves. Add the cream, creme de cacao, and 1/3rd of a cup of the sugar. Reduce the heat to low, and stir until the sugar's broken up. Take it off the heat, cool it, and pour it into ramekins or glasses. Cover it, and refrigerate it for at least 6 hours.

In another sauce pan, heat 1 1/2 cups of the raspberries, triple sec, lemon juice, and the rest of the sugar. Stir it until the sugar's dissolved and the raspberries are all soft and gooey. Then, pour it through a seive and press it down to get all of the juice out of the raspberries. There's the topping.

To pull the Panna Cotta out of the mold, just soak your ramekins in hot water for a few seconds to loosen the dessert, and invert onto a plate. To top this, there are 2 ways you can do it that I find appealing. Obviously, experiment. 

The first is to lay down a pool of the sauce, and plop the panna cotta on top of it. Use a spatula to invert the panna cotta. Top it with a few fresh raspberries. The second is to plate the panna cotta, and do what is in the picture, and garnish it with a few raspberries beside it. The first looks the best. Obviously, setting it on the base of the sauce probably has the best flavor. Some shaved white chocolate wouldn't be bad, either.


To serve it in a martini glass, set it in the glass after you make it, and let it solidify. Then, hit it with a swirl of the sauce. Put a few raspberries in the center of the finished dessert. Shave some white chocolate, then place it next to the raspberries on one side. A mint sprig on the edge of the glass finishes the look, and makes an awesome garnish.

Take out the liqueur and you can really do anything with this base. Panna cotta is only limited by what you can dream up, and it's a great base to experiment with cooking with alcohol and flavoring agents. Another great idea is flavoring it with creme de menthe and shaving dark chocolate over the top, then giving it a mint sprig garnish. 


This stuff tastes like a combination of thick pudding and flan. I can't even tell you how awesome it really is.