October 25, 2013

Chocolate Panna Cotta with Blackberry Caramel

Intro

Things look different around here, right?

I hope you don’t mind the change. I freaking love it. I was getting tired of staring at the same screen and let’s be honest, even I had a hard time using my old site. Now when I land on the home page I get fluttery and excited, when I search for an archived recipe it actually shows up (!) and the photos are a bit more pronounced, which I love. But as you know, with all new things there are often a few kinks. Hopefully they haven’t affected your time here too much.

I’m still working on archiving all my past recipes so they fit in the new format because of that there was a time there that many of my recipes went missing. While I am sorry that the lost recipes were such an inconvenience for many I have really loved hearing from you. I didn’t realize so many of you were using the recipes! I love knowing that the recipes are not just sitting on the screen but that they are actually living in your homes. With each, “I was planning on making ‘x’ for dinner! What happened to it?!” or “It’s my husband’s birthday and he made a special request for your cookies but I can’t find it!” I quickly located the recipe while feeling a great honor that the recipes were exiting my kitchen and entering yours. It’s been a great encouragement as I have been working like a crazy lady trying to make 120 of my very best recipes for the book. I can not wait for you to live in these recipes. You see how it always comes back to the book?! Now you know how my friends and family feel.

If you are having any issues with the site please do let me know. However, if you don’t like it and really have no helpful critique than I’m perfectly okay if you keep that to yourself. I do realize that there are a few more clicks than before but do you see that bar that follows you? It’s right above me. That bar has arrows on it so you can easily switch from post to post without having to go back to the main page. Why am I pointing this out? Because I just realized it myself and I think it’s pretty awesome.

I have my good friend, Jono, to thank for the design and my brother to thank for being smart enough to speak ‘internets’ and make this site become the beautiful and functioning thing it is today. (Here is his company, it’s pretty great thisiscivil.com).

The other reason why I am here is to point you to this recipe I created for S. Pellegrino. It was back in the summer when blackberries lined the hiking trails and filled the shelves at the market but the idea can be used with any number of berry. The fruit itself becomes the liquid to soften the caramel and turn it into a sauce which gives you a deeply flavored, sweet caramel that is also bright and fragrant with ripe fruit. Some of the berries are gently mashed after the hot sugar is poured over top while some are left whole. The panna cotta is softly sweet, not intensely chocolate but perfectly creamy. It doesn’t need the caramel but of course I do recommend it. And I might also suggest turning this into a more seasonal apt dessert by adding in a few warming spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom. The panna cotta is fine to sit in the fridge for a few days while you tend to stuffing and turkey and in lieu of the caramel a few arils of Pomegranate seeds would dress it up quite nicely. You can find the recipe here.