Panna Cotta Lamington Cake
Dark chocolate, raspberry and almond.
Please don’t let the word panna cotta put you off. Maybe it’s just me, but historically I am not at all a fan. I think I was scarred by one served up regularly in college, soap-like and jiggly and textureless and eaten after too much cheap wine. I tried it again at The Engine Room and concluded it was that specific college panna cotta that was dreadful, rather than all panna cottas of the species, and I shouldn’t tar them all with that brush. In theory. I still can’t shake the fear that any panna cotta I ever order might turn out like soap, and so am never adventurous enough to venture from the much safer chocolate puddings and tarte tatins and tiramisus of a dessert menu. Or maybe I still just don’t like panna cotta.
Regardless, this is not a panna cotta as you know it. Instead, it is a cake drenched in the stuff – bathed in vanilla cream, not unlike a bread and butter pudding. It somehow soaks evenly through the almond and raspberry sponge without a hint of sogginess. Moist and dense, but never ever wet. Dark chocolate ganache painted all over and toasted coconut finishes it off. It’s not too sweet but very rich, and could just as easily be served up with a morning coffee as it could be with a scoop of cream for dessert. Get the recipe here.
This month
Currently making
Ottolenghi’s smoky sweetcorn & tofu fritters: I would never have thought of pairing silken tofu with grilled sweetcorn in a recipe before, but here you blitz it up with spices, kaffir lime and herbs, panfry until golden - we served with soft boiled eggs, avocado, an asparagus salad and kimchi.
The below passionfruit, coconut & raspberry cake: another recipe in collaboration with Prahran market this month- an almost one bowl cake, moist and nutty and topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting. You can find the recipe here.
Caramelised onion & chilli ramen (well, my friend Chloe is, and I’m eating it). A tried and true vegetarian recipe by Meera Sodha with a rich and sweet caramelised onion base broth, soy eggs and greens.
Currently consuming
The Pull of the Stars - Emma Donoghue. By the author of Room (which I would also highly recommend), it’s a novel set over a 3 day period in Dublin during the 1918 flu pandemic (eerily prescient considering the currently COVID situation) from the perspective of a nurse working in a maternity/fever ward.
Crashing - Phoebe Waller-Bridge (netflix). If you haven’t watched Fleabag yet, watch that. If you also loved Fleabag, watch Crashing. Short and bingeable and full of that supremely awkward dark humour that made Fleabag so popular.
