Panna Cotta often gets passed over, forgotten as the unspecial combination of milk and gelatin. But this White Chocolate Panna Cotta isn’t your forgettable humdrum dessert, with a Tangerine fluid gel and tangerine Caviar, this is special.
Let’s get the pleasantries out of the way: Happy New Year everybody! Yes it’s 17 days late and we’ve been MIA in this site for a while (with good reason), but
To wit….this!
Face to Face here!
We have been developing this recipe for Fairchild Botanical Garden’s 2019 Chocolate Festival. It’s our first time at the festival and we really want to make a statement! So if you’re thinking of going, come see us! We’ll be there Saturday Jan. 26 at 2pm demoing and giving out tastings of this beauty!
So you’re going to make it, what should you expect to taste? First thing? A freight train of tangy citrus from the Tangerine Fluid Gel. And it’s so welcome because the White Chocolate Panna Cotta is so rich and subtle that it needs a very sharp, contrast to make it work.
And why not tangerines? They feel like the more forgotten family member of the Florida Citrus family. But good Tangerine flavor can’t be matched here.
Afterwards, you get the smooth creaminess of the White Chocolate, that pairs beautifully with milk (white ganache anyone?)  and let me tell you, it’s good!
The Tangerine Caviar is it’s own little world btw, when made right they pop! as you bite into them, releasing even more of the tangerine juice. They add a really fun textural element to the dish without being heavy or detracting from the experience.
Making The White Chocolate Panna Cotta
This part is super easy, and if you want to stop here, I dont blame you. The Panna Cotta by itself is bomb. And you can top it with whatever you want.
A few tips in making it:
- Bloom the Gelatin in the milk- this takes about 5 minutes.
- Scald the cream: this is a good general rule when working with heavy cream in a pot. It actually changes the molecular structure of the cream to make it more stable and less prone to breaking.
- Give it time to set: Since it’s Gelatin and slow to act, expect to be waiting around 5 hours for a firm mixture.
(These will be at the bottom of the recipe card as well if you want to skip this section)
Making the Tangerine Gel and Caviar
To make lives easier, we used 100% bottled tangerine juice. If you have a juicer and a high end particle strainer and the time- have at it. Otherwise, go get some organic Tangerine ( i.e: citrus) juice.
Tangerine Fluid Gel
The Fluid gel is a mixture of Gellan (Kelkogel) and Tangerine Juice. That’s it.
To make the fluid gel, first create a vortex: (put the liquid you want to gel in a blender or use an immersion blender, and then add the powder to avoid clumping together.
Tangerine Caviar
Until now the dessert is very much set, this little detail just dials it up to 11.
This part is tricky, in the 3 days I spent developing this dessert, a good 45 hours went into troubleshooting why my caviar did not gel correctly. for it to work, 3 things are needed
- 1 base Liquid that you want to gel (this is the tangerine juice for instance)
- Sodium Alginate (which you are blending with the base liquid.
- Calcium Lactate and water: When you combine these two together, they form a water bath that reacts with the Sodium Alginate.
The Science:
Sodium alginate, when blended with the flavorful liquid, will thicken it slightly- but it
Normally it works ok, but the alginate wont work in liquids that have high acidity (low PH). The acids don’t allow the alginate to develop that skin in the calcium.
To counteract this, use Sodium Citrate, a salt specifically designed to lower acidity in liquids. However, using too much will make the liquid salty and unpleasant. A workable use I found was to add 1% of the Liquid in Sodium Citrate and Dilute it with 10% distilled water (hard water reacts to the sodium alginate and will offset the process too.
Once everything is blended in the flavorful liquid, leave to set in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight. It removes the air bubbles allowing for a clearer caviar.
I’ll wrap this already obscenely long blog post by saying thanks for reading and I’m so happy that we’re back developing recipes and tools you can try at home.
Below is the recipe in detail and I thought it would be helpful to list the tools that I used in making this recipe work.
Happy cooking!
-Maury
Tools we used to make the recipe
PrintWhite Chocolate Panna Cotta
- Prep Time: 15
- Cook Time: 5
- Total Time: 5:20 min
- Yield: 6 1x
Description
This White Chocolate Panna Cotta recipe is unctuous, decadent, and so longingly tart you can’t wait to show it off! The Tangerine Fluid gel and caviar pair beautifully with the rich white chocolate.Â
Ingredients
For the Panna Cotta
- 200g. White Chocolate
- 300g Heavy Cream
- 75g White Sugar
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- .65g Salt
- 30g. Milk
- 4.3g Gelatin Powder
For the Tangerine Fluid Gel
- 200g. Tangerine Juice
- 1.5 g Gellan Low Acyl F
- 20g Sugar Optional
For the Tangerine Caviar
- 225g. Tangerine Juice
- 25g Distilled Water
- 10g White Sugar
- 2.5g Sodium Citrate
- 2.5g Sodium Alginate
For the Calcium Bath
- 1 kilogram of water
- 5g Calcium Citrate
Instructions
For the Panna Cotta
- Bloom the gelatin: stir gelatin powder with the milk and let it sit for 5 minutes.Â
- In a pot, combine heavy cream, sugar, salt, and Vanilla. Bring the cream to a boil and turn off the heat. Add the white chocolate and stir, dissolving into the cream.Â
- Add the gelatin and stir, dissolving into the cream.
- Pour into glasses or ramekins and let set for 5 hours in the fridge.Â
For the Tangerine Fluid Gel
- In a blender, blend Tangerine juice and optional sugar, while blending, add the Gellan and incorporate. Make sure there are no lumps. Pour into a squeeze bottle and leave in the fridge until ready.Â
For the Tangerine Caviar
Calcium bath:
- Combine 5g Calcium Citrate with 1kg water in a shallow container.Â
Caviar Liquid:
- Blend together the Tangerine Juice, Distilled water, sugar, Calcium Citrate, Sodium Alginate, and pour into a container to set in the fridge. Allow at least 2 hours but preferably overnight to let the air bubbles in the mixture rise to the top.Â
- Using a syringe, Squeeze bottle, or a caviar dispersion kit, draw some of the mixture and let drops fall into the calcium bath. After 1 minute, the caviar gel will set and you can draw it out of the bath.
- Rinse in another bowl with water. This eliminates the salty, bitter flavor from the calcium bath.
- Use that same day. They do not last overnight in the fridge.Â
Notes
Pro Notes:Â
- Category: Desserts
- Method: Gelatin
- Cuisine: Molecular Gastronomy
Keywords: White Chocolate Panna Cotta
If you’ve tried this White Chocolate Panna Cotta recipe or any other recipe on the blog then rate
A little about me
I’m a chef and a former psychologist. I spent years studying how we experience food to make the best eating experiences possible- and I show you how to eat well on this site. I host secret popups in Miami, FL teaching people how to approach good food that’s never been done before.
Did you make a recipe? Tag @CasaLagoTastingRoom on Instagram! I wanna see it!
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