Deconstructed Lemon Meringue Panna Cotta

Staying with Panna Cotta's this week, I decided to combine this great little dessert with my favourite pie to create something simple to end of a dinner. Lighter and not as sweet as the traditional Lemon Meringue pie, it is a great way to end the evening.

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 Cups milk

1 1/2 Cups Cream

3 teaspoons (one sachet) of Gelatine

Zest of 2 lemons

Lemon essence (optional, but useful if you are in a rush )

Condensed Milk

A few coconut (tennis) biscuits, pre-made meringues and some candied lemon peel for garnish and serving.

Start by adding most of the milk into a saucepan and add the zest. keep a little of the milk aside and pour the gelatine on top.

Heat the milk and zest and bring it up to just before boiling. Take off the heat and let the milk sit for at least an hour, or two, to let the lemon flavour infuse in the milk.

If you are in a bit of a rush, you can add some lemon essence.

When you are happy with the flavour of the milk, add the gelatine milk mixture and sweeten with condensed milk.

Heat up the mixture again to dissolve the gelatine.

When everything is dissolved, strain the mixture to remove the zest and any milk skins that have formed and add the cream and a small pinch of salt, to enhance the flavour.

Pour in your molds to set - around 4 hours in the fridge or 40 minutes in freezer, making sure you don't freeze them.

While you wait for them to set, break 2 or 3 of the tennis biscuits into crumbs and fry it in a dry pan until they start to turn darker brown. This just brings out the flavour a little more.

When you serve, place some of the crumbs at the bottom, demold the panna cottas on top of that, add some peel and a merigue and serve!