Strawberry Panna Cotta Cake
Why I Love This Recipe
A refreshing, soft and creamy cake with crunchy chocolate cookie base. Some of my favourite ingredients participated in the creation of this cake for my Valentine.
Ingredients You'll Need
Cookie base:
200 g AP flour
125 g butter
125 g sugar
50 g bitter cocoa
50 g eggs (approx. 1 egg)
70 g milk
½ vanilla bean (scraped seeds)
Steamed strawberries:
125 g fresh strawberries
40 g sugar
25 g butter
½ vanilla bean
Panna Cotta:
250 heavy whipping cream
50 g powdered sugar
125 g strawberry flavored yogurt
10 g leaf gelatin
Directions
For the cookie base:
Sift the flour and the cocoa together.
Put all other ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer and mix with the hook or paddle attachment until smooth and homogeneous. Gradually add in the flour and cocoa mixture, and mix just long enough for all the ingredients to come together.
Wrap the dough and chill in the fridge for ½ an hour.
Roll the dough out with a rolling pin, on a piece of baking paper, to about 5-6 mm thin. Cut out a 20 cm circle, remove the extra dough, transfer the cut out circle together with the baking paper on a cookie sheet and bake for about 20 minutes in an oven preheated to 180°C.
(You’ll have some leftover dough, you can freeze it for up to 30 days, and use later, or cut out some cookies and bake immediately).
Steamed strawberries:
Wash and dry the strawberries. Cut them in half or in 4, depending on their size.
Place the strawberries, the sugar, the chopped butter and the scraped seeds from half a vanilla bean in a medium sized saucepan. Seal the saucepan with a piece of aluminium foil and cook on minimum heat for 25 minutes. Remove from heat, and let the strawberries cool completely before removing the foil.
Panna Cotta:
Start preparing the panna cotta once the cookie base and the strawberries are cooled.
Put the gelatin leaves in a small bowl with cold water until soft.
Take 75 g out of 250g of cream, and warm up to 40°C. Stir in the softened, and gently squeezed gelatin. Filter the cream through a fine mash strainer to make sure there aren’t any pieces of gelatin left .
Shortly whip the rest of the cream with the powdered sugar – it just needs to become little denser, not firm.
Stir the whipped cream into the warm cream with gelatin. In the end add the yogurt as well and stir until homogeneous.
Assembling the cake:
Place the cookie base on a serving place inside a 20 cm round metal ring.
Distribute the strawberries on top of the cookie base.
Carefully pour in the panna cotta over the strawberries. Start by placing spoonfuls of cream along the border or the ring, and then move towards the center.
Level the surface with a spoon or a spatula.
Cover and chill in the fridge overnight, or 1 hour in the freezer.
Remove the metal ring and decorate as you like, with fresh fruit, chocolate etc.
