Panna cotta, the easiest creamiest dessert that goes with everything. Of course, living now in Italy I am starting to learn and appreciate all the national delicacies. This Easter weekend I am back with my family in London and I decided to make the dessert for lunch on Easter Sunday. I wanted to make something light but very tasty and that require some slow cooking. I had never made poached pears before and thought I could give it a go! (Also one of the easiest things to do, so tasty!) All you need is some pears. Then you have to make a simple syrup (equal parts of sugar and water, maybe add a little more sugar). Add spices such as cinnamon, cloves, honey, ginger... I then pealed the pears and poached them in a saucepan with the simple syrup and spices. Once they were cooked, I placed the lot in a tupperware and in the fridge overnight. The panna cotta is simply a combination of equal parts of whole milk and double cream. Boil the cream mix and then add 3 sheets of gelatin per 500ml of liquid. Pour in a nice bowl and place in the fridge overnight. To serve, I re-heated the poached pears in a sauce pan with some of the syrup, and served it all with the panna cotta. Yum!! There was quite a lot of panna cotta and syrup left over, so I saved it in the fridge for later. I decided to use it for a dessert for dinner tonight, and had some apples which needed cooking.
I wanted to combine the apples in a cake/muffin type thing, as well as a crumble. So I made a typical crumble mix of flour, cold butter and sugar (I used coconut sugar here, which has a sweet caramel taste). I placed a little bit of the mix in each hole of a muffin tin and made a sort of bowl shape for the base. I then used this recipe for the sponge (I only made 2/3 of this for my proportions, which fit in a 6-hole muffin tin): - 115g butter, softened - 115g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling - 100g flour - 75g ground almonds - 3 medium free-range eggs, beaten - baking powder I poured equal parts of the mix into each hole of the muffin tin and then baked at around 180C for 15mins until fluffy and golden. To serve, I made little holes with a skewer into the muffins and poured the syrup from yesterday (re-heated) to soak them. And with a little (or large) spoonful of panna cotta, VOILA!
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