Today is going to be a really exciting day for Anushka. She has a school picnic and will be taking the Bart to a park with all her classmates. I know she is going to be so happy and excited, she just loves the 'choo choo train'. With all this excitement I couldn't sleep and was up so early, its just 7.00 and I'm done with all my work. A good one hour before Anushka wakes up and just enough time to finish this post.
I borrowed this amazing all chocolate book from the library last week and have been drooling at the pictures and reading about chocolate every free minute. Yesterday I got super tempted and got all the ingredients ready for a chocolate mousse. But over whipped cream happened and I had to drop the plan. Then I remembered this recipe that I had bookmarked a couple of days before that called for just the amount of cream I had left.
The panna cotta is super chocolaty and makes an amazing quick dessert. What I loved about it is that it uses whole milk instead of cream and it has pure chocolate flavor, so use the best one that you can get. The original recipe does not call for any additional sugar but I thought it needed some more and the amount of gelatin can definitely be reduced. I have made the changes below to the recipe that I adapted from here.
Chocolate Panna Cotta
Ingredients:
3/4 cups whole milk
2 tbs sugar
1tsp vanilla extact
pinch of salt
1 1/4 tsps powdered unflavored gelatin
2 tbs water for the gelatin
4.5 oz dark chocolate (I used semi-sweet)
2 tbs cream
Method:
Take the water in a small bowl and sprinkle gelatin evenly over it. Let stand for about 5 mins until softened. Melt the gelatin in the microwave or over a double boiler.
Heat the milk and sugar and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat.
Stir in the melted gelatin and salt.
Melt the chocolate over a double boiler making sure no water or steam mixes with the chocolate. Strain and pour the hot milk mixture over the chocolate. Add the vanilla and carefully emulsify with a hand blender (I added the milk in three batches and just mixed it really well with a spatula). Add the cream and stir just to incorporate.
Let cool to room temperature and pour into 4 small serving glasses and refrigerate for atleast 4 hours.
