Panna Cotta with Strawberry Coulis

This is a dessert that I have wanted to make for quite a while. It’s just so good; simple, creamy, sweet and full of variation possibilities. The reason I hadn’t tried this dish out yet, was that working with gelatin scared me so much. I had heard all of these horror stories, where the dish would end up stringy and just wrong. But there are so many recipes out there with gelatin, and I would like to cook them all, so I just had to get over my gelatin fear. And I am so glad that I did, because I had no problem working with it at all. My panna cotta turned out great. Creamy and smooth and just yummy.

This time I decided to make a classic panna cotta, with just cream, vanilla and a bit of strawberry coulis on top. 

I have found recipes that use half cream and half milk, and I think I’ll try that another time as using 100% cream does make it quite rich. Still lovely though.

Ingredients – serves 4 to 6

500 ml of whipping cream

3 tbsp. of cane sugar

1 vanilla pod

4 gelatin leaves

Method:

Fill a bowl with cold water and place the four leaves of gelatine in it.

In a saucepan mix cream with sugar, vanilla seeds and the split vanilla pod.

Turn on the heat to medium and let it simmer for about 10 minutes while stirring. Then remove the saucepan from the heat, squeeze the water from the gelatine and melt the gelatine in the hot cream mixture.

Let the cream mixture cool and distribute the then 4-6 glasses (depending on the size of the glass).

Place the portions in the refrigerator for minimum three hours.

Strawberry coulis

Ingredients:

2 leaves of gelatine

250 g strawberries

3 tablespoons of sugar

2 tablespoons of lemon juice

Method:

Fill a bowl with cold water and put the two leaves of gelatine in it.

In a saucepan add strawberries, sugar and lemon juice.

Warm up while stirring and let it boil for five minutes while stirring. Remove from the heat. Blitz with a hand mixer to get a smooth consistency.

Strain the strawberry mixture through a sieve with get rid of the seeds.

Squeeze the water from the gelatine and melt the gelatine in the strawberry mixture.

Let the mixture cool for 30 minutes and then pour a little bit on top of the set panna cotta.