Category Archives: vanilla

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Raspberry Sauce

Once a week I eat at the sushi place in my office building. They have tiny shots of panna cotta and one serving never seems to be enough. So for this week’s lunch gathering I supplied the dessert.

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Raspberry Sauce

2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1 ¾ cup cream
2 envelopes unflavored powdered gelatin (1/4 ounce envelopes)
1/4 teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
splash of almond extract
1 ½ cup frozen raspberries
1/3 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon flour
water

Mix the milk and sugar in a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat. Pour the cream into a small bowl and sprinkle it with the gelatin. Whisk the milk over the heat until the sugar is dissolved. Add the cream mixture and the salt to the pot and continue whisking over the heat until the gelatin is completely dissolved, at least 10 minutes. Be careful and make sure that the milk doesn’t boil.

Pull the milk off of the heat and let it cool a bit, for at least 10 minutes. Add the extract and them carefully spoon it into 12 muffin tins to form nice molds. Refrigerate over night to set.

Heat the frozen raspberries, sugar and salt in a saucepan over medium heat. Once the raspberries are completely thawed, stir the mixture to break up the berries. In a small bowl mix the flour with water to form a slurry, make sure there are no lumps. Add the flour mixture to the raspberries. Cook for just a few more minutes to thicken the mixture. Transfer to a bowl and cool.

Fill the sink with hot water. Submerge the back of the muffin tin and let it sit in the hot water until the pudding gets a litter loose. Inver over a cookie sheet and tap the backs of the tin if needed.

Quickly move the individual desserts to plates, add a spoon of raspberry sauce and serve.

Advertisement

Soy Rice Pudding

I live in NYC and I have had a mouse. I’m insanely clean. Bordering on OCD. So really the mouse just runs around looking for food but it is all in vain. Regardless, I’m on a campaign to eat everything I have in the house to make sure there will never been anything to attract these little suckers. I have a bag of organic brown sticky short grain rice. I was going to use it to experiment with brown risotto, but have yet to.

I took about a cup of the rice and I’m now making soy rice pudding out of it. God, why am I compelled to bake? I guess it is ultimately because I have a huge sweet tooth. So I simmered the rice covered with some water just to get it started. Then I added some milk, sugar and cinnamon. Then I simmered the rice mixture till it got thick and absorbed the milk. At the end I finished it off with a splash of vanilla. Fantastic and impossible to screw up!

Soy Rice Pudding
1 cup brown short grain rice
1/2 cup water
2-3 cups soy milk
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon vanilla
pinch of salt

Place the rice and water into a sauce pot and cook on medium heat till the water is boiling. Stir the rice on the heat until the water is absorbed. Add the milk, sugar and cinnamon and keep cooking until the liquid is all absorbed and the pudding is thick. Total cooking time will probably be about 30-45 minutes. Remove the rice from the heat, add the vanilla and salt and stir before serving.