So, first off, my apologies for not posting for... jeez, 5+ months.  To put it simply, shit's been goin' down.  At some point, when the shooting has stopped, the dust has settled, the AARs are all filed, I'll tell y'all what's been happening.  But.... I've been busy. Really busy. Doing the most intellectually strenuous work of my life - and the highest stakes.  And it's coming together.  And... I can't go into detail here.

Anyway, hi!  Hope you all had a great Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, Yule, or other holiday of your choice.  Ours was quiet but good. Got to see the step-mom, Kate, Thursday night over dinner, and it was great visiting with her. I STILL need to get holiday cookies out the door. That will happen this weekend, damnit.  After we make a few more.

On other fronts - it's my birthday, and I'm not really in the mood for a cake, esp. since (a) I'm overloaded a bit on chocolate, and (b) we're doing a swiss roll/buche de noel for a party tomorrow night. So tonight we're doing birthday panna cotta instead. This is going to be a mix of two different panna cotta recipes - one being a greek yogurt recipe, the other being a egg/custard approach. Why? Because we don't want to kill 4 hours waiting for it to set.  So, first the base recipe, and then the changes we're looking at.

Creamiest Panna Cotta

Although it only has four simple ingredients (hint, there's no gelatin) this ultra-creamy Panna Cotta melts in your mouth like butter. It’s the best way I’ve found for making this popular Northern Italian dessert.

Prep Time: 5 minutes 

Cook Time30minutes minutes

Setting Time: 1 hour 48 minutes 

Total Time: 35 minutes 

Servings" 6 servings

Calories: 366kcal

Ingredients

  1. 1 ⅔ cup heavy cream (I used 42% butterfat)
  2. 75 grams granulated sugar (about ⅓ cup)
  3. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  4. ⅔ cups egg whites (about 3-4 eggs)

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 280 degrees F (140 C).
  2. Prepare a tray with 6 six ounce ramekins.
  3. Boil some water
  4. To prepare the custard for the Panna Cotta, put the cream, sugar, and vanilla in a pot and heat, stirring until the sugar has fully dissolved (don't let the mixture boil). Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool to lukewarm. You can use an ice bath to speed this up.
  5. While you're waiting for the cream to cool, measure out the egg whites into a tall liquid measuring cup. If you don't have one, you can use any tall container your hand blender will fit in.
  6. Once the cream has cooled, pour the cream mixture into the egg whites. Stick the hand blender in the mixture and swish it around a bit without turning it on to remove any air trapped near the blades. With the blender fully submerged, pulse until the mixture is homogeneous. The idea is to mix evenly without incorporating any air.
  7. Divide the Panna Cotta custard between the ramekins and pour boiling water into the tray halfway up the sides of the ramekins.
  8. Carefully put the tray into the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the custard has reached 163 degrees F (73 C).
  9. Let the ramekins cool, cover and refrigerate until set.
  10. Run a hot paring knife or needle around the edge of the ramekin to separate and then unmold the Panna Cotta onto a plate. Garnish with strawberries, or other berries.

Nutrition

Calories: 366kcal | Carbohydrates: 33g | Protein: 4g | Fat: 24g | Saturated Fat: 15g | Cholesterol: 90mg | Sodium: 70mg | Potassium: 93mg | Sugar: 31g | Vitamin A: 970IU | Vitamin C: 0.4mg | Calcium: 45mg

Modifications

We're going to change out half the cream for greek yogurt, which should also help the setup time. So instead of the heavy cream above, we're going to use 1 cup heavy cream, and 1 cup greek yogurt.

We also aren't going to invert from the ramekins to unmold them. Rather, we're using glass pudding cups we saved, and serving directly in them, with a strawberry couli that we had lying around on top.

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