Daring Bakers | Panna Cotta & Florentines

Almost every time my father comes home from a business trip, he will sit and happily tell me about all the desserts and dishes he had tried at many restaurants. It’s maddening for me, listening to the names of all these fancy, amazing desserts, which I really want to try. However, every now and then he tells me about a new dessert, which I immediately go look up. If I find it appealing enough, I book mark a recipe to make later.

A couple months ago, my father mentioned panna cotta. It sounded delicious as he described it. “It’s like flan, just as creamy, but lighter, and instead of caramel on top, there’s fruit…” I was intrigued, and so looked it up and found a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis, and left it bookmarked intending to make it soon. However I completely forgot about the recipe and it stayed there gathering dust.

This month when I logged on to the daring bakers website, to check the challenge, I was surprised: The challenge was panna cotta(and florentine cookies), and recipe for the panna cotta was exactly the same one that I had bookmarked so many months ago!

The Febuary 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

When I first tried out the vanilla panna cotta recipe I noticed that it had a nice honey flavor, that could be balanced perfectly by something that was slightly tart. Later I re-made the panna cotta, but this time I added a little more honey, to amplify the honey taste, and paired it with some tart(not too tart though) berry compote. The flavors are wonderful: creamy, tart, fruity, and sweet. It’s quite simple, yet complex.

And as for the florentines: I tried some variations and it came way different but need a few tweaks here and there…I will share the recipe later…

Honey Panna Cotta

Adapted from Giada De Laurentiis

• 1 cup  whole milk
• 1 tablespoon  unflavored powdered gelatin
• 3 cups) whipping cream (30+% butterfat)
• 1/3 cup  honey(slightly more but not quite 2/3 a cup…)
• pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Pour the milk into a bowl or pot and sprinkle gelatin evenly and thinly over the milk (make sure the bowl/pot is cold by placing the bowl/pot in the refrigerator for a few minutes before you start making the Panna Cotta). Let stand for 5 minutes to soften the gelatin.
2. Pour the milk into the saucepan/pot and place over medium heat on the stove. Heat this mixture until it is hot, but not boiling, about five minutes. (I whisk it a few times at this stage).
3. Next, add the cream, honey, sugar, and pinch of salt. Making sure the mixture doesn’t boil, continue to heat and stir occasionally until the sugar and honey have dissolved 5-7 minutes.
4. Remove from heat, allow it to sit for a few minutes to cool slightly. Then pour into the glass or ramekin.
5. Refrigerate at least 6 hours or overnight.

Berry Compote

• 1 cup of frozen mixed berries(or any fruit that you want really)
• some sugar

Wash the frozen berries in sieve to get the ice off of it.

Put the fruit in small sauce pan and just let it simmer for a while, and let the fruit defrost. Stir it a little and you’ll see some juice gathering on the bottom. Keep stirring and if you don’t see juice add little water. Not a whole lot or you’ll end up with a very watery compote, that won’t taste very good. Taste the compote. If needed add a little bit of sugar, until it tastes right to you.  Let it simmer for some more time, until the juice around the berries, thickens a little more. Remove from heat and spoon onto panna cotta.

NOTE: Because I had frozen rasberries, and blackberries in my frozen berry mix, which fell apart easily, my compote will look much different from yours. Usually compotes look something like this, with the syrup, separate from the fruit, unlike what you see here.

Enjoy!

~Dee D

“Not So Nutella” Brownies | A Craving

I woke up on valentines day with my ears still ringing from my alarm and a utter craving for something chocolaty and baked. The simple answer to that craving? Chocolate cake. But then again it was five thirty and in the morning and the possibility getting any chocolate cake was near impossible, so I rushed off getting myself ready for school, and for the whole week kept this chocolate craving at bay.

Finally on Thursday, I had time. We had a four day weekend ahead, which meant a lot of time to bake, do home work and anything else I fancied at that moment.

After I got off the bus that afternoon, I walked up the icy driveway, fiddling the the worn edges of my scarf and trying to remember where I had kept my go-to chocolate cake recipe. I was quite sure I had either stashed it in one of my desks drawers or I had book marked it. I rushed into the house, pulled off my coat, and scarf and dashed into the study.

After a frustrating ten of searching through dozens of recipes, papers, and a menagerie of my sisters art utensils with no results, I finally set off to sort through my book marks, a scarier prospect, considering I had hundreds of recipes bookmarked. I went through at least two dozen links before finding some: a recipe for Nutella brownies.

I love nutella, and I love brownies, and then finding these two combined while having a craving for something chocolate and baked? It was like finding gold.

With much zest I scribbled down the recipe and rushed off to the kitchen to bake them. A jar of nutella and fifteen minutes later, I had these in the oven. Another half an hour later I had these out of the oven, with one excited sister watching them like a hawk.

After they cooled, I cut into them, and finally tried one. But I was slightly dissapointed. They tasted excellent. But not like nutella, just like really good brownies. The hazelnut taste seemed to have completely vanished and all was left was the chocolate taste.

My sister insisted they did taste a little like nutella but I didn’t see it at all.

You’re probably wondering why I bothered sharing this recipe with you even though it was a dissapointment.

Well, because: Even though they didn’t taste like Nutella they tasted rich and chocolaty, and have the most amazing crinkly  crust on top(which you  saw in the pictures above) with a perfect dense, fudge-y inside, which is my vision of a perfect brownie.

Take a closer look at the inside:

Doesn’t it look absolutely and completely moist and delicious?

“Nutella” Brownies

Adapted From: ricardocuisine.com

• 1/2 a cup of all-purpose flour(unbleached)
• 1/4 a tsp of salt
• 1/2 a cup of butter(melted and cooled slightly)
• 1 1/3 a cup of nutella
• 1/2 a cup of brown sugar
• 1 tsp. of vanilla extract
• 2 eggs(large)

1. Preheat the oven to 325 F.
2. Sift together the salt and the flour in a bowl. Set aside.
3. Then in a different bowl, beat the nutella, brown sugar, vanilla extract and eggs together until completely smooth.
4. Then add one third of the flour mixture and one third of the butter to the nutella mixture and blend until smooth.
5. Repeat step three until all the flour and butter is used up.
6. Pour the batter into a eight by eight baking pan lined with either foil or parchment paper.
7. Bake until you can put a tooth pick and it comes out with only a couple of crumbs.
8. Cool for a hour, and then cut and enjoy :)

~Dee D.