Jolly Good! Or is it Jelly Good?

“Desserts are the fairy tales of the kitchen – a happily-ever-after to supper” someone rightly said! And I wouldn’t disagree as I am born with a sweet tooth. There may be a number of reasons why you may crave for something but food cravings definitely depend on the seasons. And summer food cravings are surely related to memories! To beat the summer heat, we used to gorge on ice creams and jellies! Basically anything that is cold and sweet is welcome during the summer time especially.

One such memory is of my mom always cold-setting a variety of jellies for us to eat. My daughters just love the jiggle of the jelly, the bright vibrant colours and obviously the fruity flavour. They are so simple to make that I thought why not enhance the jellies to make delectable desserts out of the jelly packets. In this blog I am going to share recipes for two of my favourite jelly desserts.

Orange delight

I call the first one as called Orange Delight and uses the orange jelly crystals and orange juice. Here is the recipe

1. Boil a cup of water and dissolve a 90 g packet of non-veg orange jelly crystals in the hot water.
2. Add a cup of ready to drink orange juice like Tropicana or Dabur to it.
3. Open a family pack of vanilla ice cream and add chunk by chunk of it to the hot juice mixture. Switch off the heat and continue adding the ice cream and stirring till the entire packet completely melts. Do not let the mixture boil as it might curdle the ice cream.
4. Pour the mixture into one single bowl or individual smaller bowls as per your choice.
5. Refrigerate till it sets. After it sets, you can see that the jelly has separated at the bottom and the colour gradually changes from darker to light like an ombre effect. Garnish with orange slices and serve cold.

Berry Mousse

Here is another simple but gorgeous recipe using raspberry jelly crystals:

1. Boil 200 ml of water and dissolve a 90 g packet of non-veg raspberry jelly crystals in the hot water.
2. Add 250 ml of cold water to the above and stir. That will give you a total of 450 ml of liquid jelly.
3. Whip a cup of whipping cream to soft peaks. Do not over whip. Add 300 ml of the liquid jelly to the whipped cream and stir to mix thoroughly. This is the mousse mixture.
4. Pour this mousse mixture into glass bowls lined with strawberry slices on the sides. Refrigerate till the mousse sets.
5. Once the mousse has set, top it with fruits of your choice like chopped strawberries, blueberries, black currants etc. Pour the remaining 150 ml of liquid jelly to cover the fruits. Refrigerate for the jelly to set. Your berrilicious mousse is ready!

I prefer to use non-veg jelly over the vegetarian one as vegetarian jelly tends to set at room temperature and starts becoming lumpy as the mixture comes to room temperature. Hence you may have to mix the cream in while it is still hot. That could curdle the cream.

Such simple yet delightful desserts these are!  Not only do they taste luscious but they are picture perfect!

I undoubtedly love these kind of fairy tale endings to my meals! How about you?