Strawberries and cream panna cotta

Makes 4

Cooking time: 10 minutes plus 4 hours setting time

Ingredients
2 gelatine leaves 
300ml of cream 
200ml of milk 
60g of sugar 
1 vanilla pod 
150g of strawberries 
25g of icing sugar 
¼ tsp lemon juice 

Equipment needed 
4 panna cotta moulds (I like Tescoma panna cotta moulds or Lakeland jelly moulds because they come with bases and lids for easy release. Once set, you remove the lid, turn onto your serving plate and remove the base.  This breaks the seal and your panna cotta after a few seconds releases itself on to your plate perfectly.  You can of course use pudding moulds, you will just need to dip them carefully into very hot water for a few seconds.)

Method
Take your gelatine and put into the milk to soak. 

Put the cream and sugar into the saucepan and stir so that the sugar doesn’t sink to the bottom and burn. 

Take your vanilla pod and cut in half then using a knife or small spoon, scrape out all of the seeds and put the pod and seeds into the cream mixture. 

Gently warm the cream mixture over a low heat until you can see steam coming off of it but do not let it boil. Turn off the heat. 

Your gelatine should now have bloomed.  Tip the gelatine and milk into the cream mixture and stir to until you are sure the gelatine has melted.

Pour your mixture into a pouring jug through a fine mesh sieve, this will catch the vanilla pod and any un-melted gelatine, the vanilla seeds will go through the sieve.  Stir the mixture and pour into your moulds.  The mixture should now be cool enough to put into the fridge.  Leave to set for at least 4 hours. 

When you are ready to dish up, wash the strawberries, take out 4 out and put to one side.  With the remaining strawberries, cut out the centre stalk and cut into quarters. Blitz the strawberries, icing sugar and lemon juice in a blender until smooth. Pass through a fine sieve and put into a pouring jug. 

Cut the 4 strawberries into slices and arrange on to the plates, put a swirl of coulis on to the plate and top with the panna cotta.  You can pour more coulis over the panna cotta if you like. 

Many thanks to Tyler Finaughty for recipe testing and this gorgeous pic x