Mascarpone mango-coconut squares

I had about 100gms of mascarpone cheese which I had made as a experiment.
I am going to make Tiramisu soon, but waiting for my sister to arrive from USA.  And mascarpone cheese was about to reach its lifetime :) so I decided to make something from it.  I searched for few recipes, referred 2-3 recipes and came with my own recipe. It can be made in layered approach as well, so you can stack up layers of this dessert, however keep a eye on amount of sugar you put in per layer. I am sweet tooth but I don't use much sugar in my recipes. 1. Too much sugar can make dessert just sweet not delicious, 2.It just kills main taste of dessert.

Just before putting everything in refrigerator

Ingredients:
1.  Mango pulp (or any fruit pulp not juice )
2. 100 gms mascarpone cheese (any cream cheese shall work as well)
3. 100 gms dessicated coconut
4. 50 gms icing sugar

Take a bowl and mix together mascarpone cheese, 80gms of dessicated coconut and sugar till smooth thick paste is formed. Now add mango pulp (or any fruit pulp) as per your taste and mix it well.

You are done :) surprised? well yeah this recipe don't require any cooking/baking at all. Take any square shape baking tin and grease it with little butter so that mixture won't stick to it. Then sprinkle remaining dessicated coconut into greased tin so that it will cover all tin. Pour mixture carefully in tin and make sure to level it properly. Put tin in fridge for about over night and then serve by cutting in medium sized squares.

You can sprinkle some more dessicated coconut before serving or pour some pulp around them. Enjoy chilled :)

End product :)

Hands on Panna cotta

First time I came across this dessert through some news paper article about Italian dessert. However article didn't had any of its picture. Next day I searched on Internet and hell I was too much impressed and immediately decided to make Panna cotta myself.

After reading through various recipes about it, I prepared my own recipe for it and here it goes. I don't know what should I call it so I'll keep it simply panna cotta :) I always use smaller quantity and then scale it up as per my need. This recipe shall make about 2 cups of panna cotta.

Ingredients:

200 ml Fresh cream 25% fat contents (Amul fresh cream)
30ml Milk
30ml vodka/scotch (optional)
90ml dark sweetened coffee
2 Tablespoon food grade Gelatin (Agar is veg substitute for Gelatine)


To make dark coffee:

Sprinkle half( 1/2) a tablespoon Gelatine powder to 30ml vodka/scotch.
Using Vodka/scotch is optional, it just brings a zing taste to coffee, if you don't want any liquor then just take 30ml water and sprinkle gelatine on it.
Keep it aside for 5-10 minutes or till gelatine softens and becomes fluffy. 

Now take 1 teaspoon coffee and dissolve in 90ml warm water, add powdered sugar as per your taste. Don't make it too sweet though. Once gelatine becomes fluffy mix it in coffee and heat up coffee for couple of minute or just bring it to boil and keep aside. Make sure you keep stirring coffee+gelatine mixture or else gelatine stick to bottom of pan. Once coffee comes to room temperature, pour it in 2 glasses/cups evenly and set in freezer for about hour or so or till coffee turns into firm jelly.

Panacotta in fridge 

Once our coffee is set, we can proceed to next step. Panna cotta literally means cooked cream, so we are going to cook cream now. Sprinkle 1 and 1/2 Gelatine powder on 30ml milk and set aside. Take a non-stick pan and pour 200ml cream in it. Put pan on medium flame/heat and bring cream to simmer while stirring it occasionally so that it won't stick to sides of pan. Once cream starts simmering add milk+gelatine mixture to this cream and give it a stir. Now bring cream to boil for about 2-3 minutes, turn off heat and set pan aside and let it cool. Once cooled pour this mixture over coffee jelly evenly and keep cups in refrigerator till cream sets up as jelly.

Panacotta ready to serve in chocolate sauce

Your panna cotta is ready now :) well its really high on fats+protein, so you would like to serve them in small quantity. You can choose small glasses over cups as well, its up to you, how you want them. You can decorate it using some chocolate syrup, some berries, or sprinkle some nutmeg/cinnamon/cardamom powder and serve cool.

Top view

Few important tips/observations:

1. If Jelly is not set within 1 hour or so, then take liquid in pan add some more gelatine and bring it to boil and then again keep in refrigerator.

2.Try to use either plastic (food grade) glass, so that once panna cotta is set, you can cut plastic glass and take out panna cotta without ruining it (as happened to my version :( ). Or use plastic film so that once set you can just pull out film and release panna cotta.

3.You can use any fruit juice/coffee or any liquid of your choice. 

4.If you are trying to make tilted one like shown in pic then don't take out on dish as it may separate layers. Better eat/serve from cups.

Enjoy :)

Home made Mascarpone Cheese

While reading through recipe for Tiramisu (a famous Italian dessert) I stopped at word Mascarpone Cheese? And I was like what is this thing and how one even pronounce it and where can I get this one in India.

So I visited few mega stores and realise that  this cheese is damn costly in India about 250Rs/100gms as it is generally imported. For tiramisu quantity required was about 500gms and I simply fainted by 250*5 calculation :) and it was just one of the ingredient. So I dropped plan to make Tiramisu completely . While reading about this cheese on Internet I came across Vera's page http://www.bakingobsession.com/2009/05/02/homemade-mascarpone-cheese/
and from that page I found out Shalini's page http://baketitude.blogspot.in/2012/01/mascarpone-chesse-home-made.html where she actually followed Vera's recipe to create this cheeese.

So I was like "hey hey hey, kick out expensive cheese, why not to make this cheese at home as Vera and shalini did?" So here it goes my first and thankfully successful trial for Mascarpone Cheese :)

As this was my first try I decided to go with lesser quantity and if it works then this will serve as baseline.

Things we need:
1. 200ml Amul fresh cream (25% fat)
2. 1/2 Tablespoon lime juice
3. Bigger shallow pan
4. A bowl to hold cream (flat bottom would be great)
5. spatula (wooden/silicon is preferred, but any spatula will do)
6. Sieve
7. Cheese cloth / cotton napkin

Here we go:
Fill up half a pan with water and bring it to boil. Meanwhile place 200ml cream in a bowl and keep aside. Once water starts boiling, lower the flame so that water will just simmer. Now place bowl in middle of pan in water. Stir occasionally  to make sure cream around edges of bowl to cook quickly and stick to bowl. About 7-10 minutes later small bubbles will start forming at edges of bowl, this time add half a teaspoon of fresh lime juice to cream and stir carefully to mix it properly.

Don't expect curdling action to take place, as cream will just start becoming thicker after you add lemon juice. Keep stirring occasionally for about 10 more minutes or until you could see clear strokes in bowl, or thick layer of cream seen on back of spatula. And you are done. Now turn off flame, remove bowl from water and keep aside to cool it down for about 20 minutes.  Meanwhile align cheesecloth with sieve.

Once cooled, transfer content of this bowl to cheesecloth and place it in fridge. Don't press this cheesecloth to remove excess fluid or so, just wrap it and set aside on sieve inside fridge. Keep it overnight, then remove from cheesecloth and transfer to clean air tight container and store back to fridge.

You can now use this fresh cheese for your Tiramisu recipe. Once done cheese did not appear as firm, but it becomes firm after refrigeration but still remains rich creamy and buttery.  Check image as how it looks like at end of refrigeration time.

Thanks to Vera and Shalini for their help :)