Coconut Panna Cotta with a topping of delicious passion fruit, those tropical flavors will make you fly right to the turquoise water and coconut lands. The coconut Panna Cotta is so easy to make and impossible to miss. Panna Cotta means, cooked cream, in Italian and originate from the northern part of Italy, Piedmont. It’s a simple dessert often aromatized with whether, vanilla, rum or coffee and topped with some fruity coulis or caramel. A pure delight!

For this version, the Panna Cotta is made of half part coconut milk and cream, the topping is a delicious passion fruit coulis. Those fruits aren’t the easiest to find outside of tropical or subtropical zones. In South and Central America they call the bigger yellow passion fruit; Maracuya. This yellow version of passion fruit is way more present then the purple one. In Peru, where I’ve stayed for months, they make ceviche, cocktail, cheesecake and ice cream with it, a fairly common fruit. In contrast with the northern countries, where it can get tricky to find those deliciously perfumed fruits. This recipe can use both types of passion fruit, just be carefull with the acidity level of the yellow one, you should add a bit of sweetener to it if it’s not ripe enough, which is often the case.

So let’s make those tropical flavors going!

Coconut Panna Cotta and Passion fruit

Makes 4-6 portions

Ingredients

• 400ml coconut milk (1 can)
• 200ml of heavy cream (35%)
• 100g sugar
• 10g gelatin neutral powder (or 3 gelatin sheets)
• 3-4 yellow passion fruit (5-6 purple ones)
• extra sweet syrup (cooked sugar into water) or honey 

Directions

1. *if you use the sheets; Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water a few minutes to soften them up
2. In a small pot add the sugar, coconut milk and gelatin powder and mix good until dissolved
3. Add the cream and mix
4. Warm up the cream a bit *until the gelatin sheets gets dissolved or before the liquid starts simmering (it should not really cook, even if it’s called cooked cream in Italian…)
5. Add to recipients of your choice, cool a bit and cover with a plastic wrap
6. Let sit in the refrigerator for about 3-4 hours before serving  (you can keep them for a few days in the fridge)
7. When ready to serve, cut the passion fruit in two, add the content to a bowl and check for the acidity level, add syrup or honey to your taste
8. Discard the fibers, if any, and add to the panna cotta

Enjoy the tropics!