Panna Cotta – The Italian Classic
Cooked cream, barely sweetened, perfumed with vanilla and set with just enough gelatin to wobble without collapsing. Five ingredients and the elegance of something that looks like more than it is.
The gelatin is deliberately scarce: 3.5 g to half a liter gives a very soft set — a panna cotta you eat with a spoon, not a rubbery block. If you want to turn it out of the mold, use a little more.
If you have leaf gelatin rather than powder, 3.5 g is close to 2 leaves. Leaves are soaked in cold water, squeezed out and dissolved in the warm — never boiling — cream.
And that is the rule either way: let the cream cool before the gelatin goes in. In boiling cream it loses its setting power and the panna cotta never firms up.
Ingredients
- 400 ml heavy cream (double cream)
- 100 ml milk
- 50 g sugar
- 1 tbsp vanilla
- 3.5 g unflavored gelatin (about 2 leaves)
- 20 ml cold water
Method
- 1
Bloom the gelatin in the 20 ml of cold water and set it aside. With leaf gelatin, soak the leaves in plenty of cold water and squeeze them out.
- 2
Heat the cream over moderate heat with the milk, the sugar and the vanilla, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Once it comes to a boil, lower the heat to minimum and let it infuse for a few minutes.
- 3
Take it off the heat and let it cool before adding the gelatin — in boiling cream it loses its setting power. Stir the bloomed gelatin in until completely dissolved.
- 4
Strain the mixture as you pour it into the molds or glasses. The sieve catches any undissolved gelatin and the skin that forms on the cream.
- 5
Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, better overnight. To unmold, dip the mold in hot water for a few seconds and turn it out onto a plate.
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