You can use yogurt. Keep in mind that more solids/less liquid means less gelatin is needed than if you were setting an equal volume of cream or milk.
Agar has a higher melting point than gelatin so will have a firmer set. IIRC, approx 140F vs 100F. Gelatin will more or less melt in your mouth, agar won’t, which makes it a challenging substitute.
I’d say if the vegetarians are strict, consider creme brulee instead. Or if you don’t want to turn on the oven, a lemon posset or seasonal fruit fool for something light and creamy.
Thought I’d try no setting agent first to see what texture resulted.
Should really have drained the yogurt overnight but it’s Greek and also broken into so a bunch of liquid had already separated, so I’m living dangerously.
Saffron, cardamom, and nuts plus sugar.
Biscoff and butter crust, so this is currently completely vegetarian, which would be a big plus.
I really like Claudia Fleming’s buttermilk panna cotta recipe. It has a lovely soft set, and restrained sweetness. I generally use 2 cups of buttermilk and 1 cup of cream so I can just buy a half pint of cream, and it comes out great.
Color me shocked. This worked out remarkably well.
The filling holds firm so that I could cut a clean slice, but isn’t technically “set” in a panna cotta or cheesecake way.
My laziness in not draining the yogurt did have a slight impact - there was syrupy liquid at the bottom of the container I had put the whole tart pan into, ie the yogurt continued to drain - through the crust . But I had baked the crust, so it didn’t sog out. (Next time I would drain the yogurt over a day or two, thoroughly.)
The biscoff crust was a nice counterpoint: shrikhand is a bit tart and not overly sweet, and the crust had a toasty, buttery sweetness that balanced the tartness very nicely.
My only quibble with Fleming’s is that I think her recipe is too sweet. I recorded in my copy of The Last Course to cut back the sugar. Otherwise yes, her recipe is very good.
Alice Medrich has very similar ratios in terms of gelatin (both Fleming and Medrich are a bit below 1%), but she likes less sugar in hers. She has recipes for saffron and cardamom panna cotta, jasmine, and honey in Pure Dessert.
Also with less sugar and similar ratios is Russ Parsons, who wrote a great article on panna cotta:
Thanks! I am in the midst of making a yogurt panna cotta tart (in the form of a Mishti Doi Tart, which will be a twist on one of my favorite Bengali desserts).
My real problem is cookie crust, because no matter what I do something goes wrong
Today I think the butter might have been a bit shy, although I made the same tart base twice, separately, and one of them turned out perfectly. The other one… sigh. The sides fell in - and also out - because I lightly bumped it by mistake. So I did some remedial work on it and put it back to bake for a bit. Every. Single. Time. Who knew “instant” cookie crusts would be my nemesis, but I’d be able to pull of bagels
Re the actual panna cotta: looks like the gelatin proportion varies from 1/2tsp per 1cup of liquid to 3/4tsp across recipes. I think I might stick to the low end of that because I have 3c of thick yogurt (full fat Greek drained overnight) plus 1c of whole milk. So, thicker than cream and milk. And I really don’t want a hard set.
Any thoughts? I’m not going to get to it till late tonight.
Most recipes ime are more than that. As I mentioned in my other post, 1% gelatin is a really good baseline amount for a guaranteed set but still creamy panna cotta. That’s about 3/4 tsp per cup (a tsp being 3 grams, so 3/4 tsp is 2.25 grams). You can go a bit below that, but at 1% it’s not a hard set. I used a little under 1% for my espresso panna cotta and it was juuuust spoonable. Medrich is right below 1% and Fleming a touch lower. Most recipes I see call for more than that, and those I ignore because they make hard panna cotta.
Stella Parks has a nice recipe. It’s right around 1% gelatin, which can be lowered a little bit if preferred. The sugar amount is good, and I like that she explicitly calls for salt. I add salt to all my panna cotta, so I appreciate the rare recipe that calls for it explicitly, because I do find it necessary even though practically nobody calls for it.
This thread just sent me down a gelatin rabbit hole, so i thought I’d share this handy conversion chart in case anyone has ever struggled with sheets vs powdered!