Ready? Get set... go!

This weekend I made mango and lime panna cotta, and when I bought the gelatine leaves the checkout assistant at the supermarket said she didn't get on with gelatine and asked me for advice.  She'd had a problem that I'd experienced in the past with undissolved gelatine lumps in her finished Bailey's cheesecake which were a bit weird and put her off using gelatine again.  I told her the way to avoid this (having been there!) was to make sure the gelatine was properly dissolved in the mixture.  This is even more important if you're using gelatine powder, in which case you can put the dissolved gelatine/water through a tea strainer before adding to the mixture.  I find leaves do give a better result though.

This got me thinking, why not write a post on all things that need setting - and having been inspired with the genius title, here we are!  As well as cheesecake, which has already had an entire post devoted to it, I've used gelatine in mousses, fools, jellies (on their own and in trifle), and in other panna cotta recipes including a green tea one which went with my tuile biscuits (they also had their own blog post).

My finest jelly moment was a Pimm's jelly:

The jelly itself was made with leaf gelatine, water, sugar, orange and lemon juices and obviously Pimms; and strawberries and other fruit plus cucumber in it. It looks like it's levitating in the photo but it's a glass cake stand. Another example pictured below is a strawberry and lemon mousse cake:

We also love mousses, sometimes served in a teacup for a different presentation. My daughter's favourite is white chocolate and mint (a Nigella recipe) and mine is Nigel Slater's white chocolate and cardamom.

Today's panna cotta was on the whole a success, and consisted of a mango puree layer using tinned mango slices, and a cream, sugar and lime zest layer. There WAS a small blip in the proceedings when I was trying to turn them out.  I dipped one of the dariole moulds in a dish of boiling water to loosen, but the water was so deep couldn't pick it out again so tried using tongs.  It slipped and went upside down in the water!  I did manage to rescue it though and put it back in the fridge.  Note to self,more oil in the moulds next time. 

Of course, you don't need gelatine to set things, and it isn't suitable for vegetarians either, being made out of "various animal raw materials" as Wikipedia delicately puts it! You can use agar, whisked egg whites and lemon juice can also be used to stiffen mixtures, such as in some cheesecakes and a raspberry and rose tart I once made.

Worst case scenario if things don't set, you can always change the serving presentation and pretend it was meant to be "deconstructed"!

Thank you for reading, more soon I hope.

Caroline x