Have you ever tried making your own jelly?
I’d never even thought about it really because jelly isn’t exactly expensive and there’s so many flavours to choose from so it seemed like a bit of a waste of time and energy making it. But when we were away in Wales last week, we saw some rather posh people being served a rather lovely looking afternoon tea which included some sort of clear jelly with fruit floating in it so we decided to have a go ourselves and yesterday we made Lemonade Jelly and Ginger Ale and Lime Jelly.
It’s ridiculously easy to make and the resulting jellies are so much nicer than anything you can buy in the shop!
I used Dr Oetker gelatine but you can also buy a vegetarian version of this in the baking section of most supermarkets which will work just as well and the instructions on the quantities you of liquid and gelatine that you need to use will vary depending on what make you buy and how much jelly you want to make. The instructions were on the side of all of the different packs I looked but this is what I did for the Dr Oetker one that I bought.
- First of all, I arranged the fruit in the base of the bowls (wine glasses actually) that I was going to be using – I used raspberries and blueberries in the lemonade jelly (mainly because that’s what was on offer when I went shopping) and a lime cut into wedges for the ginger ale jelly.
- This is the bit that may change depending on what brand you’re using. I made each jelly separately and for each one I soaked four sheets for of gelatine in cold water for five minutes – while this was soaking, I got on with heating up my liquid.
- For the lemonade jelly I gently heated up a pint of lemonade and for the ginger I heated a pint of ginger ale but added a quick squeeze of lime juice.
- As the liquids started to gently boil I took them off the heat and then after squeezing the excess water from my soak gelatine, I added the four sheets to each pan and stirred it in.
- I then returned the pans to the heat for two minutes making sure that it didn’t boil as the packet said that this could affect the setting of the jelly.
- After two minutes, I poured the liquid into a jug and then slowly poured it over my fruit.
- Then I put them in the fridge to set for 4 hours and voila, gorgeous looking, yummy tasting, homemade jellies.
It’s completely worth the effort making your own jelly – the lemonade jelly especially was delicious!
