Panna Cotta

I found a recipe for panna cotta on the net a while ago and tweaked it a little.
I didn’t have any suitable moulds so I bought a 12 pack of plastic tumblers from woollies. I made a quick syrup/sauce just by crushing raspberries and a little icing sugar. With the quantities below I made 7 servings.

Ingredients:
4 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup (100g) sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
powdered gelatine 4 1/2 teaspoons
100ml cold water
few strips of lemon rind

Method:

1. Place the water in a small bowl and sprinkle the powdered gelatine in. Give it a stir and set aside for 5 minutes.
2. Using a small, sharp knife, split the vanilla bean down the middle and scrape out the seeds. Place both the seeds and the rest of the bean into a saucepan with the cream, sugar, and lemon rind.
3. Simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring gently. Add in the gelatine mixture and heat through, stirring, for another 2-3 minutes. The gelatine should be completely dissolved by this stage.
4. Discard the lemon rind and vanilla bean. Pour into moulds and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
5. To serve slide a thin knife around the panna cotta and flip onto a plate. It is delicious as is but you could also add any sauces, shaved chocolate, lightly dust it with coffee just use your imagination.

They turned out really well, during the cooking process I tried the cream and it was really rich but as they set they mellowed out. Next time I may replace one quarter of the cream with a low fat cream to make it a bit lighter.