Daring Bakers - Panna Cotta with Passionfruit Gelee and Florentines

Do you like to make the classic dishes?  I enjoy making for myself dishes that are the stuff of legend due to their popularity.  The panna cotta (cooked cream) dessert comes into that category, and this month, courtesy of the Daring Bakers, I made it for the first time.

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies. 

Now a florentine in Australia is quite different to this florentine recipe, which  I would more describe as a chocolate coated lace cookie:

They are delicious cookies, but very fragile - if you don't eat them fresh out of the oven, they lose all their crispness and crunchiness.

My panna cotta are topped with a passionfruit gelee for a tropical summer feel.  Queen Vic Market obligingly had passionfruit at 8 for $2.  I used the gelee recipe here.

I decided to make my life difficult by moulding my panna cotta in silicon heart shaped moulds:

I thought it was a cute idea, but I didn't figure on how hard they would be to get out of the moulds intact.  I lost 3 along the way, so it was definitely a scary time when I was unmoulding these.  However, the end result is worth it:

Pretty, yes?

There is a veritable rainbow of different sized, shaped and presented panna cottas and florentines from the Daring Bakers this month - you can check them out by viewing the slide show here (on the 27th US time).