A restaurant-style dessert that can be done at home. This Italian Pandan Coconut Panna Cotta has velvety, smooth and soft texture with semi-sweet pandan infused flavor.
This Italian pandan coconut panna cotta has always been important to me, this was the first dessert I've ever made in an actual professional kitchen.
Back in 2014, I was so lucky to find a good, wonderful, and incredibly talented group of chefs/people/friends in a small town north of Austin, TX called Cedar Park. The two head chefs together with the rest of the team have taught me a lot of useful knowledge which I'm still using them as a strong foundation in my cooking life.
If it weren't for them, I would not be where I am right now. Gosh, how I miss them. Thai, Ek, David, Michael, Tim, Jessica, Tina, Kuantan, Alphonso, Tina, John, I wish you all know how much you all mean to me. Until today, I still remember every single details of our good time together. Can we turn back time and have ourselves run the last service day?
Anyhow, I can go on and on about how good we were back then and how the memory of working at Spin has been always significant to me.
But this post is not about that right? It's about how delicious and creamy Italian dessert is.
The combination of pandan leaves and coconut milk creates such a smooth, velvety texture, and wonderful flavor.
Not to mention the vibrant light green color that the pandan leaves bring to the table. You'll have one of a kind dessert, so familiar yet so unique.
Speaking of vibrant color, this is in fact not the only panna recipe. If you want more holiday theme and attracting dessert, this Chocolate Pandan Panna Cotta will bring you to aw.
Ingredients used to make this panna cotta
- Mini muffin pans - you should use single mini muffin mold or silicon mold in order to remove the panna cotta easily.
- Gelatin sheets - I used gold rank gelatin so keep this in mind if you are using different ranking of gelatin. Rules of thumb are: add or substract 1 sheet if you are using lower or higher ranking gelatin sheets.
- Platinum gelatin (230 bloom)
- Gold gelatin (200 bloom)
- Silver gelatin (170 bloom)
- Bronze gelatin (140 bloom)
- Titanium gelatin (120 bloom)
- Gelatin powder - If you can get a hand on gelatin sheets, they can be replaced by gelatin powder. 1 gelatin sheet equals 1 tsp gelatin powder.
Because of the usage of gelatin sheets, these panna cottas need time and space to set. So make sure you rearrange and save your most ‘quite’ space in your refrigerator for them.
I would recommend your fridge’s top shelf where they can sit at least 6 hours, non-touch, and nothing can get into the liquid while waiting to set.
I also recommend using gelatin sheet instead of gelatin powder. The sheets will give panna cotta smooth texture and more flavorful.
How to bloom gelatin sheets and gelatin powder?
In order to incorporate gelatin sheets seamlessly into any mixture, they need to be bloomed first.
The correct way is to soak them in a bowl of cold water or ice water for few minutes (ideally 2-3 minutes). If you can squeeze them and get rid of excess water without they fall apart, then you have bloomed them right.
If not, you need to throw them away and start a new batch. Don't soak them in room temperature or warm water, they will immediately become over bloomed the moment they touch the water.
For gelatin powder, you need to sprinkle (do not pour) the powder on the surface of small amount of cold water. Ideally using 1 tbsp of cold water for every 1-2 tsp of gelatin powder.
When using both types of gelatin in a mixture, after bloomed, you need to dissolve them in hot liquid not boiling liquid.
If gelatin is incorporated in boiling water, it will immediately loses its binding strength. Which makes the final product stays in its original liquid form and won't have a pudding texture it supposed to be.
Velvety Pandan Coconut Panna Cotta
Equipment
- 1 mini muffin pans or few plastic molds
Ingredients
- 1 can coconut milk (13.5 fl.oz)
- 10 oz heavy cream or half and half
- 5 sheets gelatin see notes for more info
- 4 oz granulated sugar
- 6-8 pandan leaves washed, chopped
- ¼-1/2 c water
Instructions
- Bloom gelatin sheet (gelatin powder) in cold water.
- In a blender, combine chopped pandan leaves and ¼ c of water. Put a blender on medium speed to blend the leave. Add more water if needed throughout the process, try not to exceed ½ c of water. In case you need more liquid to work with, gradually add extra 1 tbsp until all the leaves have blended well. Strain the liquid. Discard the leftover pandan pulp. Keep the green juice.
- In a medium pot, heat up cream, coconut milk, pandan leaves juice and sugar on medium heat, swirl constantly until sugar dissolve (simmer for about 6-10 minutes). Do not let the mixture boil or it will be separated.
- Take the pot off the stove. Squeeze excess water out of gelatin sheet then put them in the mixture. Stir the mixture until all the gelatin sheets dissolved.
- Strain coconut mixture through a fine sieve mesh. Then pour in mini muffin pans or any mold you have in your kitchen.
- Put them in the fridge to set for at least 6 hours before serving.
- When they’re ready, take them out of the mold or eat directly as you prefer. They can be served with candied nuts, and any kind of sweet tangy jam.
- Have fun and enjoy!
Sounds very nice although I will definitely reduce the sugar amount.
Another remark concerns gelatine: according to Hervé This-Benckhard (have a look in this book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1093651.Kitchen_Mysteries on the chemistry on cooking), gelatine becomes much "stronger" when you allow it to set at room temperature rather than a fridge. In cool temperatures, the long molecular gelatine strings cannot entangle well enough one into another (yielding a weaker gelatine) whereas in slightly warmer ambient temperature they do.
Hi Bernhard,
Thank you for the info, it's very interesting. I'll take a look at the article soon. To be honest, i have never tried to let anything made with gelatin set at room temperature rather than the fridge. This sounds promising and i will experiment this the next time I use gelatin.
Hello Tu! I am gonna try your recipe today so wish me luck! Meantime, I would like to know though how to remove the set panna cotta from the muffin tray?
Hi Lisa,
The easiest way to unmold panna cotta from a muffin tray is to oil it well with cooking oil spray or manually brush with vegetable oil. When you want to remove them, carefully tilt the pan and use your hand to jiggling the panna cotta out of the mold. It'll come out easily, unbroken :). Hope this helps.
Yes! Thank you for the explanation. I shall try it then!
Hello, I haven't tried this recipe yet but I was hoping you could elaborate on what it can be served with, what flavour of sweet tangy jam? I was thinking of making an ice cream to serve it with, what flavour would you recommend? 🙂
Hi,
I used to serve this panna cotta with homemade ginger jam, it is the best. Other than that I would recommend orange jam and berry jam.
Ice cream sounds great also but don't go with chocolate or anything too heavy. Vanilla & fruit ice cream should be good.
You can also add chopped nuts (like walnuts or pecans), and mint leaves (together with jam/ice cream) to pair with. A little crunch adds nice touch to panna cotta.
Want to go extra fancy? Throw in an ice cream waffle or a tuile.
Let me know how things go.
I followed all the steps but it’s separated now. Is it because I didn’t leave it chill until it gets to room temp?
Hi Uni,
So sorry to hear that happens to you. You meant the panna cotta set but it separated into different layers, correct? One of the reasons I could think of is perhaps the milk mixture was pass simmering temperature and reached boiling temperature. It's a thin line between these two.
If you decide to make it one more time, try to keep the mixture at simmer temperature (on medium low heat, and the milk reaches temperature ~ 180F - use a cooking thermometer is the best way to tell) only. You can eye-ball by seeing small bubbles start to appear on the surface and around the edge of cooking pot. If the bubbles busted and liquid start shattering together, it means the heat is too high.
I hope these helps. Otherwise, feel free to give more information and ask more questions, I'm happy to troubleshoot them.