Hot weather desserts are tricky.  No cakes or anything that will run the oven too hot in a Sydney summer (and hence heat the house up worse),  a lot of people revert to ice cream with chocolate topping or fruit salad.

I love panna cottas, they’re a really rather simple thing to make but I think the result is fantastic.  My wife introduced me to them a couple of years ago at the Taste of Tasmania festival in Hobart which is in my opinion the best festival nation wide for celebrating food.

The best thing about them other than the taste, is the fact that they are a blank slate.  Any selected combination of flavours can be expressed neatly in a panna cotta – I make blueberry and cinnamon ones but they are a bit of an open canvas.  I’ve almost got a shortlist of what I want to try in terms of panna cotta flavours and I’ll probably get through all of them by the end of the warmer weather;

  • Honey and Rosemary
  • Rasperries and Rum
  • Pecan and Bourbon and
  • Blood orange

But for now, here’s how to make the blueberry and cinnamon ones;

Ingredients

  • 480ml of milk
  • 240ml of double cream
  • 1tbsp of ground cinnamon
  • 250g of blueberries – very, very ripe ones work best.  If they are not a few days away from being past good, soften them in half a cup of sugar and a quarter cup of water to make a sort of chunky jam to bring out the flavour
  • 100g of sugar
  • gelatine, see note

You’ll need 6 largish ramekins.

This recipe needs gelatine, here’s the rub.  Use 5 sheets of a 25g pack of the most expensive gelatine you can afford.  Do not use powdered gelatine, it sucks, your result will suck.  Seriously.  Use sheets of pig skin gelatine.

Method

  1. In a microwave-safe jug, put 100ml of the milk and heat it until hot but not boiling, put the gelatine in and stir it so the gelatine begins to soften and disolve.
  2. Put the remaining milk in a saucepan with the blueberries and cream and stir until it begins to simmer.  Heat it very gently.
  3. Add the sugar, then stir the gelatine / milk combo in and stir constantly.  There should be absolutely no lumps of gelatine.
  4. Put 1/6th of the cinnamon in the bottom of each ramekin and then pour the mixture in gently, this makes sure the top of each has a strong cinnamon flavour but it doesn’t overpower the entire thing