Playing with agar agar

Wow, it's been busy times and that's why I have been mostly cooking something quick and not even taken any pictures for a while..I have also tried some new things which I want to share with other curious cooks.

My mum had bought agar agar for our first attempts to make vegetarian panna cotta. As I eat dairy products and eggs, it's not too difficult for my family members to cook and bake for me. Gelatine I try to avoid if I just can: I usually check package information carefully and leave cakes and desserts with gelatine for the others. Sometimes I would like to try making a cheese cake, so it's time to try agar agar, gelling agent made from seaweed. In many countries it can be purchased from supermarkeat, but here in Finland it's sold in pharmacies and ecoshops.

In fact I tried agar agar for two dishes: panna cotta and white chocolate & coconut cake. I found several vegetarian panna cotta recipes in fact in various languages, but just checked them out for the approximate amounts of agar agar. I had a one small cup of cooked cream (around 1,5 dl) and I mixed 1 teaspoon of agar agar in it. It was too little and it ended up being like thick cream with some bigger pieces of jelly in it. Not very pretty, but tasty with blueberries ;) I hope to try it soon again.

Because it was mothers' day, me and mum also baked a cake together. My mum has been making some no-bake cakes with jellified coffee or cream filling, and this time we tried one with a white chocolate and coconut combination. I was suprised how well it worked and how pretty the cake looked in the end! The original recipe was taken from the website of a Finnish cooking programme and slightly modified; there would have been a caramel sauce on top of it, but we left it out.

So here's a recipe for it:

Bottom:
150 g cookies (e.g. digestive)
1 dl grated coconut
75 g butter or margarine

To the side decoration of the cake:
a sliced carambola fruit

Filling:
(gelling agent, see later)
3 dl cream
200 g white chocolate
250 g curd
1 dl sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

(Caramel sauce:
1 dl sugar
1 dl grated coconut
1 dl cream)

Mix the cookies and coconut in a food processor and pour in melt butter. Press the mixture on the bottom of a springform pan, which is covered with baking paper (just to get it out easier). Place the sliced carambola on the sides of the form.

At this point mum soaked the gelatine, but if you don't want to use it, boil some hot water and mix agar agar with it. Since I mixed the gelling agent with about 2-3 dl of filling, I took 1,5 tbsp agar agar and mixed it with some tablespoonfuls of hot water. It dissolved quickly into a jellified mass, which I left aside to cool a little.

Prepare the filling: melt the white chocolate in the microwave or water bath and let cool a little. Whisk the cream and pour the chocolate into the bowl, beat again. Add curd, sugar and vanilla sugar. Spice with some lemon juice. Then add the agar agar mass, mix very well until the consistency is smooth and pour into the baking form.

Let it cool at least for some hours and then remove carefully from the springform. You can also cook some caramel sauce to decorate it: boil cream and sugar together on a low heat until thick brown sauce and add then the grated coconut. Let cool and spread on the cake.

As you can see, we made one bigger cake (with gelatine) and one smaller one (with agar agar). I took maybe one fourth of all the filling, so my cake was thus very small 2-3 persons' cake :) I also used for the bottom just 3 cookies, some coco flakes and a knob of butter. However, this was a good attempt and I'm positive about trying it again. I have read that it might not work so well with dairy products and end up being gritty and not very prettily jellified, but I liked the consistancy of the cake. However, since I'm just experimenting for the first time with agar agar, all tips and recipes are welcome. Mum said that she'll happily leave gelatine out of all the cakes and desserts, if she's convinced enough about switching to the veggie-friendly version :)