Recipe: Panna cotta with caramel sauce
After eight cookbooks, a baking blog and hundreds of recipes, Heel Holland Bakt winner Rutger shares 100 recipes for pies, cookies, cakes, pastries, rolls and desserts—not only the ones he has baked most often himself, but also those baked by home bakers. These recipes have been collected in his new baking book, Rutger bakt de 100 allerbeste recepten. We are absolutely addicted to his panna cotta!
Rutger: “Panna cotta is a silky-smooth Italian dessert. It literally means ‘cooked cream’ and I love it. This is my basic recipe, to which you can add all kinds of things or serve alongside it. The art of a good panna cotta is using just enough gelatine to keep it from collapsing, but certainly not too much. The pudding should wobble nicely after unmoulding. Do you find unmoulding the panna cotta too much hassle? You can also make this dessert in glasses and serve it that way.”
How to make the panna cotta
- Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water. Split the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds. Put the seeds and pod in a saucepan together with the cream and sugar, and bring to the boil.
- Once the cream is boiling, remove it from the heat and dissolve the soaked gelatine in it. Pour the cream mixture into 4 (metal) moulds (with a capacity of 125–150 millilitres) or glasses and leave them to set in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours.
- The panna cotta made directly in glasses can be served as is; the one in moulds still needs to be unmoulded.
- To do this, dip the moulds in a bowl of hot water for a few seconds (be careful not to let any water get into the panna cotta) and then remove them. Loosen the top edge all around with a sharp knife, then turn the panna cotta out onto a small plate.
Tip: to prevent all the vanilla seeds from sinking to the bottom—and therefore ending up on top after unmoulding—you can first let the cream mixture cool to room temperature before pouring it into the moulds or glasses. Stir the mixture occasionally while it cools.
How to make the caramel sauce
- Put 50 millilitres of water and 200 grams of sugar in a tall saucepan and bring to the boil. Let it cook until a golden-brown caramel forms, without stirring. Meanwhile, heat 175 millilitres of cream until just below boiling point. When the caramel is golden brown, add the cream and stir well to combine. Be careful, it will splatter! The caramel may clump. This is not a problem; continue stirring everything gently until it becomes a smooth sauce. Remove the sauce from the heat, add 20 grams of butter and a pinch of (sea) salt, and stir well once more. Stir the caramel sauce a few more times as it cools to prevent sugar crystals from forming in the sauce.
Serve the sauce warm (lukewarm) or cold.
Title: Rutger Bakt de 100 allerbeste recepten
Author: Rutger van den Broek
Price: €29.99
Publisher: Carrera Culinair
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