Preparation
Because the dessert is cream one of my biggest worries was bacteria. I decided I needed to make the panna cotta as close to “on site” as possible to minimise the desserts being outside of a chiller/refrigerator. I hired a holiday home close to the venue that had a modern kitchen with plenty of bench space and a large fridge. I also pre-ordered the cream from the supermarket so it was as fresh and as chilled as possible.
The jars and lids were sterilised in batches before filled with the creamy panna cotta, and cooled in the fridge in soldier rows that made it easy to count.
I decided to do half the panna cotta on Thursday, the other half on Friday. While I thought I could do the 150 panna cotta in one (long) day, I didn’t want to discover at the end of that “long day” that I had a problem with the mix - that it hadn’t set or it couldn’t all fit in the fridge, for instance. So splitting it in two a) saved my feet and b) ensured that if there was a problem, I had time to fix it before delivering the dessert on Saturday before the wedding.
While cooking the second batch of panna cotta on the Friday, the first batch was topped with the different flavourings. The second batch of panna cotta had its toppings added on Friday night after testing the dessert was set. While all the toppings were cool when added to the set panna cotta, I added the salted caramel while it was still hot. This way it melted into the set panna cotta and remained soft - sometimes caramel can be a bit chewy when cool and I didn’t want anyone fighting caramel with their spoons.
Transportation
The boxes the jars had been shipped in originally made the perfect mode of transport for the panna cottas to get to the wedding. There were 48 jars per box so made them easy to lift, carry, transport and store in the chiller.