Panna Cotta
Panna Cotta
During our cooking classes in Italy, you learn to make several types of desserts, cakes as well a soft, delicate delights to be eaten with a spoon. The secret to a good panna cotta is achieving something that sets, but is still wonderfully creamy. Experiment with agar- agar quantities since they do vary! The alternatives (using gelatin or fish glue) are to our tastes just too jelly-like and not creamy enough.
Persons
8
Ingredients
For 6-8 small crème caramel-type moulds:
- 1 litre of cream (2 pints) or 3/4 litre cream and 1/4 of full cream milk
- 3 level teaspoons of sugar Half a fresh vanilla pod
- Approx 5 g (1 teaspoon) agar-agar in powder, flakes or sticks
- For the sauce: 300 g (10 oz) of ripe strawberries, kiwis or mango
- Sugar
Instructions
- Split open the vanilla pod and place in a saucepan with the sugar and cream (and milk if using). Bring to the boil, stirring constantly.
- When the mixture has come to the boil, add the agar-agar, lower the heat and leave for a further two or three minuts.
- Pour the mixture into the moulds, allow to cool and place in a refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving.
- Wash and prepare the fruit, cutting it into small pieces.
- Add just enough sugar to sweeten (approx 1-2 teaspoons, depending on the fruit).
- Heat on a low flame for a few minutes, just enough for the fruit to soften.
- Leave to cool. Serve spooned over the panna cotta once out of its mould.
The quantities of agar agar are incorrect. 5g is not 2oz so some guess work needed here. Trial and lots of error unfortunately.
Just a quick note on this panna cotta recipe; 5 g translates at around a teaspoon, not 2 oz (which is @ 56g) Your american readers might get tripped up over this 🙂
Thanks for the catch Anon! we’ve just updated the recipe
5 grams of agar-agar is about one teaspoon. Sorry and thanks for the catch Bellafioriuno!
What kind of cream do you mean in this recipe?
In Italy we typically only find one type of cream: in Britain it’s know as single cream, In the US it’s called light cream (18% to 30% fat).
Ciao! I don’t have agar agar, may I substitute it with geletin? Grazie!
I’m sorry, but in no way does 1 tsp agar powder equal 1 tsp agar flakes. This recipe seems to have a huge margin for error.
Thank you for the recipe.. It worked first time for me.
The amount of sugar can’t be right. I am not a great fan of excessive sweetness but 3 level teaspoons of sugar for a litre of cream? That’s 15ml. Other recipes generally have the sugar content at more like 200ml sugar per litre of cream.