Cool stuffs for hot weather

Did this drink cool you down? It is so hot nowadays that I am making more drinks and cold desserts. This is lemonade. My friend June (June, thank you very much for sharing) posted her drink over Facebook and it looks so refreshing, so I just have to try it out since I have ready ingredients. Furthermore hubby is not in town half the week so there is no one to help with eating the bakes... 

After cooking both ingredients together, I had around 400 - 500 ml of syrup. I waited for the syrup to cool a little before adding the lemon. I cannot remember how much water did I add, but after adding alot alot alot more water, it is still quite sweet. However, my kids went "I am in heaven (imagine them dancing and prancing round) .. I am in heaven ..." after they took a sip of the drink. (*grin*)

After making this lemonade .. I tried my hands on Panna Cotta. I got the recipe from a book I borrowed from the Clementi Library. The recipes featured in this book is rather straight forward and simple enough and I am thinking of adding it to my bookshelf. I am very happy with the taste of this dessert but the presentation and the assembling method needed improvement! Let you see what I mean.

 

Did you see the pretty red jelly rising up through the cream layer like molten lava? I thought the jelly layer has set after like 30 minutes in the fridge .. but it proves not. So when I had the warm cream pour onto the jelly layer .. this happens... Anyway, not very unsightly and after topping up with jelly again ..  all we have to do is wait for the dessert to set and the night to fall. I must say I really like to eat this. I think there is a high chance for me to make this again because this is indeed a good way to use up whip cream. I had problem finding small strawberries to decorate the little cups (to look like what is shown in the book and some restaurants) but they are tasty on their own.

Here's the recipe (from 簡易蛋糕甜品自煮樂 － 芝芝著）which I will need again.

Ingredients ( makes 4-5 dessert cups)

strawberry jelly 
- 1 pack of strawberry flavoured jelly powder
- some hot water
- some powdered gelatin


Panna Cotta
- 150g whipping cream
- 150g milk
- 30 sugar
- 5g leaf gelatin (same weight if used powdered gelatin)


Method


Making strawberry jelly
1. Follow the instructions printed on strawberry jelly powder packaging. Dissolve jelly powder and powdered gelatin in some hot water. Pour into dessert cups. Chill in fridge until set.


Making panna cotta
2. Combine whipping cream, sugar and milk in pot. Heat over low heat for 1 minute. Turn heat off.
3. Add soaked leaf gelatin. Gently stir until gelatin dissolves. Let cool. Pour into dessert cups. Chill in fridge until set.


After making the above successfully, I had the idea of trying out the chocolate panna cotta. This time I have to google for recipe. I found one off the net, but forgot to copy down the source. The ingredient are as below.

Chocolate Panna Cotta

400ml cream
200ml milk
40g sugar
125g dark chocolate 
14g gelatin

I did not copy down the method as I believed it should roughly be the same. I did read to make sure that gelatin is still the last one to add. However, this time, the chocolate did not melt nicely. There are specks of chocolate which never did get dissolved. I even made two version, normal fresh milk and chocolate milk. The chocolate version is more tough than the white version. I still like the white version better. Here is the no frills (ie no deco) chocolate panna cotta.

There are wordings on the bottom of the mould, so the pudding has the prints. The kids, upon seeing the prints, said that the pudding is like store bought, with the brand on it. LOL.











Now I wonder how much weight did I gain after eating all these.