Strawberry, Vanilla Panna Cotta Verrines

I love easy desserts, those fast but satisfying kinds. I must say, gelatine does WONDERS in quick desserts. Puree some fruits or whisk some yoghurt and cream- add a dash of gelatine (not literally, but you get the gist of it, it's just magic dust) and you'll get a dessert with some wow factor already right there. 

So I never actually planned on making this in the first place, but it was my sister's birthday just yesterday and I made her this strawberry, pistachio entremet (recipe/photos up soon!) and had leftover mousse (okay, just between you and me, I guess I intentionally made extra because I always had a pretty strawberry based verrine thing going on in my mind for absolutely AGES as you can see in my to-do list because I was in awe with the whole tilting the individual cups to get diagonally set mousse, like this gorgeous one. So I basically jumped at the chance of killing two birds with one stone with my strawberry mousse and made some simple panna cotta and strawberry gelée to go with it- nice and simple right? I also had some leftover ganache so topped the verrines with it but I don't think was necessary and found it quite distracting from the refreshing fruity flavours. 

Recently, I also got my hands on some organic vanilla paste that had real vanilla seeds and I knew it'd make my panna cotta look a tad bit more gourmet. Yes, I'm a crazy girl who always has visions when buying ingredients in the supermarket aisles. 

I've also discovered another amazing food blog- L'atelier Vi who really super fancy desserts- a new inspirational blog for me and maybe you guys too so check it out! I was also really inspired by this very dressed up apple crumble from dailydelicious here and wanted to incorporate some kind of pistachio streusel bits to add some interesting texture originally to the birthday cake but in the end, sprinkling it on top was not pretty so I decided we'd just serve it with it but leave it out in the actual presentation and also sprinkle it on my verrines. 

For the Strawberry Mousse (Recipe Adapted from here)

400g mix of raspberries and strawberries (frozen is fine)
2 tsp lemon juice
140g sugar
3 teaspoons powdered gelatin or 8g gelatin leaf
240g yogurt (I used low fat natural yogurt)
230ml thickened cream

1. Bloom the gelatin.

2. Put the strawberry and lemon juice in a blender and blend until smooth.

3. Pour the mixture into a saucepan add the sugar and heat until the sugar melt.

4. Put the gelatin into the strawberry and stir until smooth; let the mixture cool to room temperature.

5. Whisk in yogurt

6. Whip up cream till soft peaks and spoon 1/3 of the whipped cream into strawberry mixture and fold the strawberry mixture lightly back into whipped cream

7. Pour the panna cotta into glasses or cups to about 1/3 of the height and let it set in the refrigerator until set. 

Vanilla Bean Yogurt Panna Cotta (Recipe Adapted from here)

200ml thickened cream
45g sugar
1 vanilla bean, split & scraped (I used 1 tsp. vanilla paste)
3g sheet gelatin OR 1 teaspoon powdered gelatin (I was abit paranoid that it wouldn't set- as with all recipes with gelatin and added a tad more but found it a little too set now, so just follow the recipe well!)
100ml plain yogurt or creme fraiche

1. In a small saucepan, cook the heavy cream, sugar and vanilla bean until it comes to a boil. In the meantime, soak the gelatin in ice water. When the cream has come to a boil, remove the pan from the heat and add the softened gelatin. Whisk to dissolve it. Sift into a clean bowl, discard solids, and let it cool to about body temperature. Add the yogurt and whisk well.

2. Pour the panna cotta on top of the mousse to nearly fill to the top. Chill till set.

Strawberry Gelee with Diced Strawberry (Recipe Adapted from here)

150g fresh strawberries, diced
100g strawberry puree
2 tbs sugar
2g sheet gelatine OR ½ teaspoon + 2 dashes powdered gelatin

1. Warm half of the strawberry puree with the sugar in a medium saucepan over low heat. Soak the sheet or powdered gelatine in ice water. Remove saucepan from heat once sugar completely dissolved.
2. Add the softened gelatin to the warm strawberry puree. Add the rest of the puree and diced strawberries and mix well. Let it cool to room temperature then spoon the mixture on top of the chilled yogurt panna cotta to about 2/3 of the height of the glasses/cups. Let it set in the refrigerator, about 30 minutes to 1 hour.

For the Pistachio Streusel (Recipe Adapted from here)

50g  plainflour
50g brown sugar/white sugar mix
50g ground almond and pistachio mix
60g butter
A pinch of salt

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper.

2. Put all the ingredient into the food processor, process until combined. (rub butter in if you can't be bothered washing the food processor like me)

3. Pat the dough into the pan and bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

4. Take out of the oven, then lower the heat to 150°C

5. Using the fork to tear the dough into small crumb, let the crumb cool to room temperature.

6. Bake the crumb again for 10 minutes, then let it cool completely. 

To Decorate:

Pink pralines, pistachio/almond bits, piped chocolate shapes

I nearly forgot, I know it's alot of inspiration in one post, but I've got to share this amazing, amazing cookbook- Eleven Madison Park- The Cookbook. I don't even know how I got to know the book and become so easily obsessed by it but it was something like me googling entremet to get ideas to present mine, then found this cool site,- eat a duck I must browsed some more and saw this gorgeous post. This video will sum it all up. I've already ordered a copy online and hope it'll be coming sometime this month! Will do a proper review sometime later despite already knowing it would mainly be a source of inspiration for the photography rather than the impossible-seeming-gazillion-component-dishes.

Thank you for reading so far, I realise it has been a mega post with an excessive number of photos, but as usual, I just had deciding problems! It's nearly the end of the week and only 7 days left of high school. Well, can only look at the bright side of things- like a sushi party in my Japanese class tomorrow! Super pumped!