Tomorrow will be my birthday. Ouch… another year, another wrinkle;-( and to make matter worse I will be returning back to work on Monday. I really love teaching, but getting up so early to be at school at 7:15 is hard!!! and I am not looking forward to it. I am sure that I am not the only one.

Because my birthday fell on Monday and my husband is on Friday, we had a few friends over for hors d’oeuvres on Saturday. Not a big fuss, just a few friends we had not seen over the summer and the chance to catch up. Of course, we needed to have food… because a party at the Wagner’s is never without food so I prepared a few things.

On the menu we had:

• Beef tenderloin
• Marinated Shrimps
• Quiches
• Lasagna cupcakes
• Wonton purse,
• Texas caviar
• Tomato Caprese
• Deviled Eggs
• and for dessert, mini chocolate darlings, and vanilla Panna cotta.

I love to entertain and have friends over, but because it was so so nice on Saturday and I wanted to enjoy my pool for a while, I decided to do easy things for dinner. And it was the same with my desserts, i did not want to spend an hour making desserts so I decided to make mini chocolate darlings that cooked in 12 minutes and vanilla panna cotta ( less than 5 minutes).

Today I will share the recipe of Vanilla Panna Cotta. It is so so easy to make, it costs nothing and, and it is decadent;-)

Basically, the perfect dessert;-)

Ingredients for 12 size cupcakes or about 20 shot glasses:

• 2 1/2 cup of heavy cream
• 1/4 cup of sugar
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1 envelope of gelatin from Knox
• 1 tbsp of water

1. Empty the content of the envelope into a small bowl. Add 1 tbsp of water and stir. Set it aside to let the gelatin thickens.
2. Pour the cream and the milk into a small saucepan and set it aside.
3. Meanwhile place the vanilla bean onto a cutting board,  
4. and with a sharp knife, open the side of the bean as shown.
5. With the knife, or the spoon scrape the inside of the bean to get the seeds.
6. Empty the seed into the cream. Throw the opened bean as well.
7. Cook the cream until it comes to boil.
8. Add the gelatin, turn the heat down and cook for another 5 minutes until the gelatin has completely dissolved.
9. Sieve the mixture into a very fine sieve to remove some of the vanilla bean residue.
10. Pour the mixture into a recipient of your choice. Sometimes I use my fancy flexipan, but today I used small shot glasses for a fun display.
11. Place the panna cotta in the fridge for at least 6 hours. You may also place them into the freezer so that they will congeal much faster.
12. Decorate as you wish. I chose the place a fresh raspberry but you could add a fresh fruit coulis instead or chocolate ….
13. Enjoy!!! And it is okay to have more than one;-)))
14. 

If you decide to use a flexipan, freeze the panna cotta and unmold it as it is forzen, it will be much easier to remove from the flexipan;-)

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!