Mixed Berry Vegan Panna Cotta 🍓🍈🍮

This recipe is the result of various trials to find the right balance of ingredients for a classic of Italian cuisine but in vegan and low-gi version. I actually prepare this as a summer treat when I meet with my friend Maria who is vegan. Finding a tasty dessert that is likeable for both a vegan and diabetic diet is a bit of a challenge, at least for me who heavily use dairy in my recipes. This recipe also requires that the cream actually gets to a solid state, which is somehow more difficult with non-dairy products.

Panna cotta (literally meaning cooked cream in Italian) is amongst the most popular Italian desserts, probably for its versatility and as a base for further elaborations on the basic recipe. Its Italian origins go back to the end of the XIX century but very similar preparations are present in the culinary traditions of Denmark, Hungary and France. The most similar is probably the blanc manger, prepared with milk, rather than cream, and rice flour or corn starch, instead of gelatine which is present in French cookbooks since the Middle Ages.

Ingredients for 2 people:

250 ml of soy cream
1 vanilla pod
50g of stevia sugar
1 sachet of vegetable gelatine
200 g of mixed berries
sambuca
lemon juice

Preparation:

Pour the soy cream into a saucepan, add the vanilla pod and the stevia sugar, mix everything well and bring to a boil.
As soon as it starts to boil, add the sachet of vegetable gelatine and continue cooking for 2-3 minutes.
Remove from the heat and with a ladle, pour the mixture into a mould. Let it cool down for an hour outside the fridge, then place the containers in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours.
in the meantime wash and cut the mixed berries (if you are using strawberries). Marinade them in the juice of half lemon and a dash of sambuca. Let them cool in the fridge, along with the panna cotta.
Take the panna cotta out of the mould and serve in individual pots, decorating with the mixed berries.