I’m Italian and as you can imagine I love the traditional panna cotta recipe. However, instead than just pouring it in classic dessert cups, I like to serve my panna cotta in an unconventional way to sparkle joy to my guests.
Panna cotta is one of my favorite desserts. I love its round, soft, delicate and melting taste.
Its physical characteristics make it perfect for creative and impressing dessert ideas without having to spend too much time or to use too many professional tools. If you have dessert molds and some sugar decorations, you have all you need to easily make a wonderful panna cotta!
The only limitation is the fact that sugar decorations must be added at the moment you serve it because panna cotta tends to melt them. If you really need to prepare it with enough time in advance, you can make thick sugar paste disks to put on the top of the panna cotta and place the decorations on the top of it 1 or 2 hours before serving. A little trick that can save your dessert appeance.
However, if you already have in mind the kind of presentation you want to make, decorating a panna cotta does not take that long.
I usually make little flowers, leaves and other small fondant decorations when I have time and I store everything in my little sugar wonder box. When it comes time to decorate, I just pull out the dessert, pick up my little sugar paste sculptures… and I’m done!
I also have a few small bottles of sugar beads that always come in handy to add a finishing touch to the whole thing.
Traditional panna cotta ingredients
- 500 ml of fresh cream
- 100 ml of milk
- 100 g of sugar
- 10 g of gelatin sheets
- 1 table spoon of vanilla extract
- Caramel sauce (or any other sauce you like)
Panna cotta recipe
- Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water for at least 5 minutes.
- In the meantime, bring the cream, the sugar and the vanilla extract to the boil and heat the milk in a separated saucepan without letting it boil.
- Squeeze the gelatin sheets and let them dissolve in the milk.
- Remove the cream from the heat, pour the milk and gelatin mixture into the pan with the cream and mix carefully.
- Por it in silicone dessert molds (I used this one that look like a tiered cake).
- When the panna cotta has reached room temperature, place it in the fridge to harden for at least 5 hours.
- Just before serving, unmold the panna cotta, add the caramel topper (or any other one you like) and decorate with sugar decorations (see below).
How to make your pannacotta creative and unconventional
You can decorate your panna cotta in many different ways and I think that the small silicone tiered cake mold is perfect for this purpose.
If you want to make the sugar paste flowers you can see in the picture, just just roll out some sugar paste. Then, cut out a flower with a small sugar paste cutter. Work the petals with a sugar paste ball tool, press in the middle with a stick for a 3D effect and add ready-made cake design stamens or a small sugar paste ball. Color with powdered food colors.
Pur the sugar paste flowers and some heart sugar beads over the panna cotta at the moment of serving and enjoy it with your eyes before eating itthis delicious dessert.
Have fun with panna cotta decorating!
Check my creative cooking recipes for more inspiring ideas!