Adult Breakfast for Dessert - 2014 PACE Award Winner

This dessert was actually two separate ideas that we combined into one. It started with a playful research and development idea in the kitchen where the chefs played around with the idea of an adult cereal. We used what was in the pantry and ended up soaking crispy noodles in kahlua and baking it off, then adding a spiked milk to it. The idea grew to using a more familiar cereal, so we ended up finding that cheerios worked best with the kahlua and for the milk, we made a white russian to pair with the cereal.The latte panne cotta was a separate idea that was made as a dessert itself. After taste testing, we felt that the portion size was a little too much but we really enjoyed the flavors. We remembered seeing a vessel on the Catersource conference tradeshow floor that was a mini coffee cup, so we ended up purchasing those cups and made a smaller version.Now how did did two desserts come together? Well, we knew the cereal idea would be difficult to sell as a stand alone dessert, so then we thought about incorporating another breakfast idea to go with it and the latte panna cotta just fit! Coffee and cereal, but for dessert!