PANNA COTTA
INGREDIENTS:
- 1/3 cup skim milk
- 1 (.25 ounce) envelope unflavored gelatin
- 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
DIRECTIONS: 1. Pour milk into a small bowl, and stir in the gelatin powder. Set aside. 2. In a saucepan, stir together the heavy cream and sugar, and set over medium heat. Bring to a full boil, watching carefully, as the cream will quickly rise to the top of the pan. Pour the gelatin and milk into the cream, stirring until completely dissolved. Cook for one minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla and pour into six individual ramekin dishes. 3. Cool the ramekins uncovered at room temperature. When cool, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight before serving.
HACK: I wanted mine to be completely fat-free though, so I substituted fat-free half & half for both the skim milk and the heavy cream used in this recipe. I made an additional tweak by substituting the Splenda for all the sugar called for. For flavor, I scraped the caviar out of a whole vanilla bean into the cooked cream portion and added 1/4 teaspoon of almond-vanilla powder to the milk-gelatin portion. Topped the desserts with fresh raspberries. It came out super creamy, flavorful and neither my boyfriend nor I missed the fat or calories at all!
HACK For a tropical treat, I put in an anise pod, a cardamom pod, one or two turns of black pepper and scraped the caviar from half a vanilla bean, then threw the remnants into the boiling fat free half and half mixture. Instead of vanilla, some good rum stood in. In the bottom of the ramekins, I'd cut up some candied ginger really fine. YUM!!!