We Should Cocoa Challenge #43 White Chocolate and Coconut Panna Cotta

With Coconut Tuiles and Blackcurrant Coulis!

This month's  We Should Cocoa challenge is being hosted by Laura of  id much rather bake than blog  and she has chosen Coconut as the guest ingredient to pair, any which way you choose, with chocolate.

For me this was an exercise in trying to use up some ingredients from the fridge. I had a half used can of coconut milk, some cream and some blackcurrant coulis all left over from previous meals.

I wanted to find something I could make for the March 'We Should Cocoa Challenge' other than cake as I have baked rather a lot recently. I was Googling white chocolate and coconut and came across a few different panna cotta recipes which seemed to fit the ingredients I had rather well.

I have never made panna cotta before and generally find it too rich but this version with a mixture of cream and coconut milk promised to be lighter. I think you could make it even lighter by using whipping cream instead of double cream but that was all I had.

The quantities given will make enough for 4 portions which are not huge but are far from mean.

For the Panna Cotta
200ml double cream
1 level tsp granulated gelatine, use a measuring spoon for this**
100g good quality white chocolate
100ml coconut milk
caster sugar as required to adjust sweetness

• Put the gelatine into a small bowl and add two tablespoons of water and leave until the water is absorbed.
• Heat the coconut milk and cream to just below boiling point.
• Take off the heat and add the white chocolate stirring until it has all melted.
• While the cream mixture is still hot add a little to the gelatine, stir this and then add all the gelatine mix back into the cream mixture and stir well.
• Taste for sweetness and add any caster sugar to taste. The white chocolate will add quite a lot of sweetness and there will be more in the fruit puree so be cautious.
• Pour through a fine sieve into a jug. The sieve will catch any lumps of gelatine or undissolved added sugar.
• Set out your glasses or serving bowls and pour the mixture carefully into each to get four even portions. Try not to drip any of the mixture onto the sides of the glass.
• Transfer the filled glasses to the fridge to set.

Fruit Coulis/Puree
The coulis was some I had in the freezer after a glut of blackcurrants last summer. Any flavoursome fruit puree would do, raspberry, cherry, mango. Lightly cook the fruit, puree and sieve if needed to removed pips or fruit fibres and sweeten to taste. Make sure the puree is completely cold before using.

Coconut Tuiles
I followed the recipe from the BBC Good Food website: Coconut Tuiles

Tuiles do not store very well so I reduced the recipe by half to use one egg white only. You do need to make sure that you spread the tuile batter thinly or the cookies will not be delicate and crisp. To make nice even shapes a stencil of some sort can be very helpful. I have used a small kilner jar seal/ring before but a steady hand and careful eye work well too. Watch the baking time very carefully as they change from too pale to too toasty in a blink of an eye.

To serve
Once the panna cotta mixture has set carefully pour a layer of fruit puree on top of the set cream.
The tuiles are best kept in an airtight container until the last minute as they quickly lose crispness. Allow more than one biscuit per person as they are quite delicious and make a nice contrast to the soft cream.


** Gelatine is not the easiest ingredient to work with and you may prefer to use gelatine leaves rather than powder/granulated gelatine. Professional recipes will even state the grade of leaf gelatine required but these are rarely found in supermarkets. I follow a lot of pastry chefs on Twitter and recently saw a post from @mlaiskonis (Michael Laiskonis) where a table to convert one type of gelatine to another was given and this is what he posted:

 Direct link to the post: Sheet/Powder Gelatine conversion
For more information about the We Should Cocoa challenges and to see all of the write ups visit Choclette's blog