Peach Panna Cotta with Raspberries

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It’s time to pamper your taste buds! There is nothing more tempting than luscious peach panna cotta — like a creamy, soft pillow — topped with brisk, flavor-bursting raspberries. The combination of rich creaminess and invigorating berries is divine!

Could you believe that this heavenly dessert comes with only 3.3 grams net carbs per serving! Since the peachy, velvety panna cotta is full of elegant flavor, it doesn’t hurt if you leave out the raspberries in search of even lower carb count.

 

 

Tips for making the panna cotta

I’m going to keep the explanation short here and let the photos do the talking. Since this dessert is very easy to prepare, it doesn’t need too much explaining anyway!

So, here we go.

Place 1/4 cup (60 ml) of the cream in a small cup or bowl. Add the gelatin powder.

 

Mix well.

 

Place the rest of the cream (1 1/4 cup = 300 ml) in a medium saucepan. Even the amount of cream is not that much, I recommend medium — or even large — saucepan because the cream might easily boil over if you use small saucepan.

 

When you have poured the cream into the saucepan, add the teabags…

 

…and the sweetener.

 

Mix well. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir all the time, but very carefully so that the tea bags don’t break. Again, I prefer gravy whisk. I think I always use gravy whisk when I cook something with cream!

 

Now it’s boiling! Be careful that the cream doesn’t boil over. Remove the saucepan from the heat. I have induction stove so I just turn the heat off.

 

Remove the tea bags. The gravy whisk is again handy for lifting them!

 

Set the tea bags aside and place them for example in a small cup or so. I grabbed a ramekin for that.

 

Pour in the gelatin mixture.

 

Mix well, until the gelatin is completely dissolved.

 

If you really want to ensure that you get all the possible peachy flavor, squeeze the (hopefully already cooled) teabags gently to save all liquid.

 

Yes, squeeze! But be careful not to break the fragile tea bags.

 

When you think you have squeezed all the flavors, discard the bags and mix the creamy mixture for the final time.

 

Just pour the ready mixture into silicone molds, glasses or whatever dish you prefer. Let the panna cottas set in the fridge at least five hours.

 

My panna cotta experiments

During the whole summer and fall, I have been craving for peaches. Since they are a bit high in carbs, I cannot consume too many of them. I was thinking of using peaches in a dessert anyway, but maybe use only a little peach and get some more flavor from other ingredients which are lower in carbs.

For many years, I have wanted to use tea for flavoring food. I have written down ideas with rooibos tea and different fruit teas as seasonings. Fruit teas! That would be the solution here to get more fruity flavor to my peach dessert.

But what could be the best type of dessert to use both peach and tea? After a short pondering I came to the idea that creamy and velvety panna cotta would be the perfect carrier for both the peach and the tea. To maximize the peach flavor, I naturally wanted to use peach tea. Celestial Seasonings has great, peach-flavored herbal tea.

So, for my first experiment I used my old panna cotta recipe as base. Since I was going to use both fresh peach and peach-flavored tea, I boldly named my experiment “Double Peach Panna Cotta”.

I pureed one peeled and pitted peach. To get the flavor out of the tea bag, I added it to the cream I was heating. I had also added the pureed peach to the cream mixture. After adding the gelatin I poured the mixture into ramekins. Then a looong waiting.

After some five hours, when the panna cotta had set, I excitedly took a spoonful of the creamy substance and tasted it. Quite good, actually! But there was something disturbing me very badly, and that was the peach puree. It just felt terribly grainy even it was smooth puree. Weird.

Ok, maybe I should have cooked the peach first and not just used puree made from raw peach, but as I wanted to make this dessert easy to make, I definitely didn’t want to use my precious time for cooking anything. Of course, I could use ready peach puree for babies, but I didn’t have any at hand. Neither did the nearest grocery store. So, I decided to give up the idea of adding real peach to my panna cotta. Who knows, maybe I could save some carbs that way as well?

I still was thrilled of the name “Double Peach Panna Cotta” and wanted to continue my experiments with that approach. But if I cannot use real peach, where I do get the second peach flavor? Peach-flavored tea was a must, but what else? How about some peach stevia!

In my next experiment I replaced the peach puree with 20 drops peach stevia. Everything else I kept the same. The result: fantastic! But, now I needed to have something fresh with this overwhelming creaminess. Berries would be my fresh idea. I basically wasn’t thinking of other berries than raspberries. The good old melba is acknowledged and proved to be perfect.

As I wanted to maximize the peach flavor, I used two bags of peach tea in my next experiment. I also increased the amount of Swerve to 1/4 cup (60 ml) and left out the peach stevia. It didn’t really hurt to give up the “Double Peach Panna Cotta” approach: with fresh raspberries the result of this experiment was beyond belief. I was in heaven when I slowly indulged myself with the soft and creamy peach cloud spotted with flavor-bursting raspberries!

Because I’m already developing wild recipes for my favorite party, Halloween, I also tried to make lilac panna cotta. I used True Blueberry tea, hoping it would give the needed color. Well, it didn’t, even I let the tea bags steep in the saucepan overnight. The flavor was also a bit questionable, or at least not my favorite. The peach was my definite favorite, no question about that.

 

 

 


 

Nutrition information	Protein	Fat	Net carbs	kcal
In total:	11.2 g	126.5 g	13.3 g	1237 kcal
Per serving if 4 servings in total:	2.8 g	31.6 g	3.3 g	309 kcal

(Nutritional values with raspberries)

 

 

Nutrition information	Protein	Fat	Net carbs	kcal
In total:	10.6 g	126.0 g	10.8 g	1220 kcal
Per serving if 4 servings in total:	2.6 g	31.5 g	2.7 g	305 kcal

(Nutritional values without raspberries)

 

Tips for variation

I like to serve these panna cottas decorated with fresh raspberries. A great idea is also to puree the raspberries and use the puree as sauce. And if the seeds disturb you, you can easily strain them out for example by pressing the puree through a fine mesh sieve and discarding the seeds.

You can naturally use other berries than raspberries. I just chose raspberries, because they are a perfect match with peach. Raspberries are also low in carbs, actually they are ones with the lowest carb count, right after cranberry.

If you want to get really experimental, you can try other tea flavors instead of peach. Fruit Tea Sampler from Celestial Seasonings and use the teas for different drinks, usually cold drinks. If you happen to have my “Healthy Drink Recipes” book, you know what I’m talking about!

P.S. The links in this post are for my Amazon store, however if you live outside the US, you might not be able to get the goods from Amazon. However, since the Celestial Seasonings teas are available worldwide, most likely you get them also from your own country — I can buy the tea sampler from my nearest grocery store here in Finland. And, nothing prevents you from trying other peach-flavored herbal teas in case you don’t find Celestial Seasonings.

Next week, we are getting prepared to Halloween with my first ever round-up. Stay tuned!