Fruits of the (Notts) Forest

The only fruits you're likely to find in our local forest are shifty looking characters dog 'walking' and the occasional man in tights (honestly).

Luckily, our local megalithic food depot does a great 'Finest' bag of frozen 'Fruits of the Forest' which includes the tasty assortment of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and black currants.

Mixed (without unfreezing) with a standard Strawberry Jelly and before you can say 'eh-up-me-duck' you've got cracking desert.

Verdict from the JellyLab

Didn't last 5 minutes once dished-up at the dinner table. Looked and tasted fantastic. Interesting to note: Black currants are the only fruit of the forest not to float. Poor blighters.

Scores out of 10

8 Taste

6 Wobble

7 Fun

Jelly is back in vogue – and about time, too

Jelly recipes in this weekends Guardian! The first time 'Hugh Fernly-Whirly' writes a recipe that I may have the ingredients for...

Mould no.1 - The 2 Imperial Pints Mega mould

Here at the Lab we're really excited to have purchased our first Jelly mould, a fairly conventional 2 pint (1.137ltrs), 'ribbed' design in a bright green, dishwasher safe, plastic (£2.99)!

It appears to have been the great Victorians who excelled in the art of Jelly mould making. I've seen some great examples on eBay, but none so far compare with these historic examples, that take you back to when Jelly was often the crowning glory of the dinner table.

Experiment v2.0 - Rainbow Jelly

Attempt number two proved more successful! Yes, I know the photo looks like attempt v1.0, but in reality it is about twice the size.

In the JellyLab we made some slight tweaks to our original process. Firstly we used a bigger Pyrex bowl and secondly we waited longer in between adding layers.

Verdict from the JellyLab

JellyMonsterJnr's lapped this up, although they're still not keen on the green 'lime' flavor jelly.

Scores out of 10

7 Taste

9 Wobble (bigger jelly = bigger wobble = much desert related hilarity)

8 Fun

Breaking news: Just discovered a rainbow jelly method that use's yoghurt to give more distinction to each of the coloured layers...

Home made Orange Jelly

Have you ever wondered how Jelly was made before it came in handy dissolvable cubes? I thought I'd dig out a recipe and have a go at making jelly from scratch.

Stuff we used:

8 Juicy Organic Oranges

1 Organic Lemons

About 50g of Icing Sugar

Packet of powdered gelatin

What we did:

1. First juice the oranges and the lemon. Get all the juice out you can, you'll need just under a pint in total. If you're short of this you may want to squeeze a bit more. Put the juice into a jug.

2. Whisk the icing into the the orange juice until it dissolves. Taste it, and if it's not sweet enough, add a bit more.

3. Make up the gelatin solution according to the packet instructions.

4. Add the gelatin solution into the orange juice and mix well.

5. Pour the the orange juice/gelatin mix into you mould of choice, then stick it in the fridge and wait.

Verdict from the JellyLab

Although the Jelly looked fantastic, JellyMonsterJnr's didn't rate this very highly. It had a strong orangey punch in flavor and not that much of a wobble. However, I'm not entirly sure that I got the gelatin mixture quite right. So future experiments will follow.

Scores out of 10

2 Taste

3 Wobble

5 Fun (a few extra marks for squeezing oranges)

Experiment v1.0 - Rainbow Jelly

Here's what we did:

1. Bought 5 different flavored Jellies (Black currant, Strawberry, Orange, Pineapple & Lime).

2. Starting with Black current, we made up half the packet of jelly then set it in the fridge (If you follow the directions, each packet makes a pint of jelly, which was far too much liquid for the Pyrex dishes we've got)

3. We then did the same for the other four flavours in turn (setting times varied between 2-8 hours).

Result:
Tastes Delicious! Some of the colours stayed more distinct than others. Not much difference between the Black current and Strawberry. JellyMonsterJnr 1 & 2 not very keen on Lime flavour.

Improvements:
Use the Black current at a higher concentrate than recommended next time to see if it retains more 'purpleness'. Maybe have more standardised setting times?

On your marks, get set, go...

Last weekend, whilst tucking into his favorite desert, JellyMonsterJnr asked me a question.

Can you get Jelly shaped like a dinosaur or a robot?

This got me thinking.

When I was a kid, I can remember having a pudding shaped jelly, even a rabbit shaped Jelly, but things never seemed to progress from there.

So I began my search. John Lewis, Lakeland, Amazon, eBay, random other sites with dubious navigation. I even tried some social search sites like 'Ardvark'. No robots or dinosaurs to be found. This got me asking bigger questions.

What moulds could you get?
Could I design/make my own?
What happens if you freeze Jelly?
What happens when you mix different colours?
What can you put into Jelly to jazz it up?
Why do adults stop eating Jelly?
Am I too old to enjoy a good wobble?

It was time to find out.

Join us in the 'JellyLab' where the JellyMonster family will share our exertions, explorations and experiments into the exuberant world of Jelly.