White chocolate espresso panna cotta with mint and blackcurrant gel

Here in Denmark we have the food blogger challenge and I am joining for the first time. This time the challenge is specific ingredients, and there is both a savory and a sweet challenge.

Sweet dishes, cakes and desserts is always a challenge when you are diabetic, but I pride myself in making things that does not taste “sugar-free”.

The sweet challenge must contain berries, chocolate and either edible flowers or fresh herbs.

My choice of panna cotta was an easy one, but since it literally translates into cooked cream, and my focus is sugar-free and calorie reduced, I have tweaked it to use skim milk and skyr, so I guess it is closer to a panna latte 😉

My favorite berry has always been blackcurrant, and since it is the season, I thought that was a good place to start. So I grabbed my book The Flavour Thesaurus to figure out where to go next. It is an excellent little book that helps you find flavor pairings that really work.

After browsing back and forth and reading here and there I discovered that blackcurrant, chocolate, coffee and fresh mint goes well together. Coffee, almonds and white chocolate is an excellent mix, so that was going to be my starting point. It was just a question of coming up with the right recipe.

After a couple of iterations I had the right way to do it. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Ingredients 4 Servings

Panna cotta

1. Brew a cup of espresso and let it cool.
2. Fill a bowl with cold water and put 4 leaves of geletine in.
3. Chop 50g of white chocolate finely.
4. Warm 150 ml of skim milk in a small pot.
5. When it boils remove it from the heat. Pour in the chocolate and mix until completely dissolved.
6. Squeeze the water out of the gelatine and put it in the milk mixture. Mix until the gelatine has completely dissolved.
7. Pour 50 ml of espresso into the milk mixture.
8. Add 200 ml of skyr and mix thoroughly.
9. Add Perfect Sød to taste. Try with 1 tsp and add ¼ tea spoon between each tasting. It needs to be pretty sweet without being extreme. When it cools it will appear less sweet.
10. Pour the mixture into 4 serving glasses or wine glasses. Put your panna cotta in the refrigerator until it is completely stiff.

Almond crunch

1. Warm a pan to middle heat. Add 200g of Perfect Fit to the pan in a uniform layer.
2. Varm it while watching it. Try to keep is as thin as possible. After it has melted a bit, you can turn it upside down and melt it from the other side. It is very sticky and thick and like melted sugar, will burn your badly, so use tools.
3. Pour 40g almond splits onto a baking sheet.
4. Pour the caramel on top of the almonds and put a baking sheet on top of it.
5. Using a rolling pin, roll it as thinly as possible, making sure you roll it onto the almonds.
6. Let it cool.

Mint and blackcurrant gel

1. Do not make the gel until your panna cotta has completely set!
2. Put blackcurrant, chopped mint leaves, star anis, lemon juice, 1 dl of blackcurrant juice (undiluted) and 1 dl of water into a pot.
3. Bring it to the boil and let it simmer under a lid for 5-10 minutes. Stir once in a while.
4. Remove from the heat and crush the berries using a wooden spoon.
5. Pour into a bowl through a sieve.
6. Let it cool to room temperature.
7. Put 2 leaves of gelatine into cold water (at least 5 minutes).
8. Sweeten it to taste using Perfect Sød. You need to put enough sweetner in for the sour taste to go away.
9. Put over the heat and warm up the juice.
10. Remove it before it boils and put in the soaked gelatine and mix until it is completely dissolved.
11. Let the juice cool until it is finger warm.
12. Pour 50 ml of juice into each serving glass and put back in the refrigerator.

Putting it all together

1. Cut the almond crnch with a knife into decorative pieces.
2. Put a couple of fresh berries on top and stick a piece of the almond crunch into the panna cotta.
3. Put a piece of decorative mint leaf on top.
4. That is how you make white chocolate espresso panna cotta with mint and blackcurrant gel. Enjoy.