Panna Cotta, Rosé Jelly, Grapefruit & Honeycomb

When you become a vegetarian, there are some things you need to adapt to. Like switching from gelatin to agar-agar when making jelly food. It is not always doable, but it is easily done with panna cotta.
This cocktail-like dessert started with me being stuck on what to do with the raw honeycomb I just bought. You can put some on a cheese plate, a salad or on top of a yogurt, … It is such a beautiful product that it can elevate any kind of dish. But I wanted to make an easy but fancy looking dessert and thought it would work perfectly with vanilla, grapefruit and rosé wine. Flavors that are great for a hot summer day!

You can make the agar-agar panna cotta and rosé wine jelly the day before and finish garnishing the dessert the day of. It’s a very fast dessert to make, it just requires some resting time for the panna cotta and jelly to set in the fridge.
I used a dry rosé wine
which balances with the smoothness and sweetness of the vanilla and honey. If you don’t like alcohol, I would advice to use some kind of fruit juice that is not too sweet, like blueberry or lemon for example. And depending on that, replace the grapefruit with another fruit so that everything pairs well together.

For the garnishing, I did two different ways
Cutting the grapefruit segments in half or not, layer of rosé jelly or not, … If you don’t know how your guests feel about alcohol, it might be safer to not pour a layer of rosé jelly on top of the panna cotta and put the jelly cubes on a separate dish on the table for everyone to decide.
If you’re not familiar with cutting citrus fruits segments, I made a quick video on how to. I always use a serrated knife – bread knife – to peel and cut the segments.

Summery Agar-Agar Panna Cotta
Ingredients
Vanilla panna cotta
- 1 cup whipping cream 240 ml
- 2 tbsp sugar 30 g
- ½ vanilla bean or ½ tsp vanilla bean paste/extract
- ½ tsp agar-agar 1 g
- 2 tbsp hot water 30 ml
Rose wine jelly
- ½ cup rose wine 125 ml
- ¼ tsp agar-agar 0.5 g
Topping
- ½ grapefruit
- raw honeycomb
Instructions
Vanilla panna cotta
- In a small pot, mix together the water and the agar-agar and let sit for 5 minutes.
- In another pot, pour the cream, sugar and the scraped vanilla beans and heat up – medium heat.
- Bring the agar-agar to a boil and whisk for 1 minute from that point on.
- Pour the agar-agar in the hot cream and boil for 2 more minutes, while stirring.
- Pour the panna cotta in two wine glasses and refrigerate for 1h.
Rose wine jelly
- In a small pot, mix the wine with the agar-agar, bring to a boil and stir for 2 minutes from that point on.
- Pour a thin layer on top of the panna cottas and pour the rest in a small dish covered with saran wrap. Refrigerate for 1h or overnight.
Topping
- Peel and cut the grapefruit into segments. Cut the jelly in cubes and the raw honeycomb in small pieces.
- Place a couple of grapefruit segments, some jelly cubes and raw honeycomb pieces on top of the panna cottas.