Dreamy Panna Cotta with Grape Gelatin

Dreamy Panna Cotta with Grape Gelatin

Soft, dreamy vanilla Panna Cotta topped with a layer of sweet grape gelatin and delicious fresh fruit is a perfect ending to a perfect meal.

This dreamy panna cotta is “to die for!” Your friends and family will be amazed at your cooking skills when you serve them this elegant yet easy to make dessert. Panna cotta, or cooked cream, is a pudding that only uses a few ingredients. It can combined and layered with fresh fruit, ice cream, fruit syrup, pancakes or any other pairing you can imagine to create unique and elegant desserts. Panna cotta can be made to be melt in your mouth soft, or additional gelatin can be added to firm it up and mold it into unique and interesting shapes.

When I prepared this recipe for Mountain Plums, it was Shine Muscat season in Japan. Shine Muscat are sweet seedless green grapes that are available around the end of summer and into early autumn. Any green grapes can be used to prepare this recipe, and if grapes are not available then any wild berry will work just as well.

Dreamy Panna Cotta with Grape Gelatin

Panna Cotta, which means “cooked cream” is a very popular dessert in Japan. Panna Cotta is a type of pudding with a light vanilla taste and goes well with fresh fruit. This version of panna cotta is layered with the padding on the bottom, a layer made with “shine muscat”, which is a large seedless green grape you can buy in Japan, and fresh fruit on the top.

PREP	COOKING	YIELD

PREP
COOKING
YIELD

Ingredients:

Panna Cotta

1 cup heavy cream (200ml)
1 3/4 cup whole milk (350ml)
4 TBSP + 1 tsp sugar (55g)
1 packet of powdered, unflavored gelatin (or Agar agar) (5g)
2 TBSP water
1/4 tsp Vanilla extract

Grape Purée

1/2 lb seedless green grapes (225g)
1 packet of powdered, unflavored gelatin (5g)
2 TBSP water

Instructions:

Prepare cream layer

Combine milk, sugar and cream and heat over medium heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Do not allow it to boil.

While the mixture is heating up, prepare the gelatin. Combine 1 pack of gelatin with 2 TBSP water, mix well and allow about 1 minute to harden.

When the sugar is dissolved, microwave the gelatin for 10 second until liquified and stir into the cream mixture. Continue to stir over medium heat for two more minutes, remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.
Allow to cool for 5 minutes. Pour liquid into glass containers and refrigerate for two hours to let the panna cotta gel.

Prepare Grape Purée

Purée the grapes in a blender or food processor. Prepare the second pack of gelatin as described above.
Heat up the purée in a double boiler or put into a metal and place the bowl in boiling water.