My Momoko

This is my second posting in my cooking series. Kika is helping me make almond jello, a light and delicious Chinese gelatin dessert.


Here are the ingredients:






2 envelopes unflavored gelatine
2 cups boiling water
1.5 cups sugar
1.5 cups milk (you can use cow milk, soy milk, or evaporated milk or rice milk, or even almond milk)
about 1 tsp almond flavoring
Canned fruit

Note: In the picture I show Knox Gelatine and Agar Agar, a gelatin derived from dried seaweed. Either ingredient can be used to make this jello. Agar Agar makes for a firmer jello.

1. Boil the water and add gelatine and sugar until dissolved. Stir in milk.






2. Stir in the almond extract.



3.Pour into a 13" x 9" pan. Let cool and refrigerate about 2.5 to 3 hours. Note, this made pretty soft jello. You might want to reduce some of the liquid if it's too mushy.





4. Cut into cubes and serve with canned fruit such a fruit cocktail, mandarin orange, or lychee.

Here's my finished almond jello with fruit cocktail. I love the maraschino cherry!


Kika shows off her almond jello, which is a little different than mine. She used agar agar and mixed the canned fruit in with the jello prior to refrigerating. Looks yummy too!

Oh gosh, this looks GREAT!
Is this like the coconut confection served at dim-sum restaurants? If so I am allll over this!

BTW agar-agar is completely vegetarian, and is not actually gelatin (according to Wikipedia agar agar is a polymer made up of galactose, which is a sugar; gelatin meanwhile is a protein (and an incomplete protein at that; you can't survive on gelatin as your protein source)). If people don't want to eat gelatin because it's derived from animals, agar-agar is a great substitute.

Mikan wrote:Oh gosh, this looks GREAT!
Is this like the coconut confection served at dim-sum restaurants? If so I am allll over this!

BTW agar-agar is completely vegetarian, and is not actually gelatin (according to Wikipedia it is a polymer made up of galactose, which is a sugar). If people don't want to eat gelatin because it's derived from animals, agar-agar is a great substitute.

Thanks for the correction about agar agar. I always thought it was gelatin because it firms up after it cools down. I wonder who discovered agar agar's properties and thought, hey, this would make a cool dessert if we mix it with sugar and fruit.

I'm not sure about the coconut dessert at the dim sum restaurants that you are talking about. I haven't seen those personally. I know that sometimes they serve almond jello at dim sum. Speaking of coconut, there's a Hawaiian dessert called Haupia. Maybe that'll be my next recipe. Unfortunately, I don't think there's an equivalent Re-ment set.

Wiki says the Japanese have used agar agar extensively in foods (like desserts, of which I think I have had many), though I also associate it with petri dishes and microbe cultures ... lol. So maybe a Japanese invention given that it's derived from seaweed ... I mean, even that culinary popular villain MSG was (I think) first derived from seaweed by Japan....

I think the recipe you described, if one substitutes in coconut flavor somehow and uses agar agar, is pretty much the dim sum dessert. I don't like coconut but I looooove this stuff. It is sooo good with jasmine tea. So now I am kind of thinking about how I could try this out with your recipe as a base.

Re: no Re-ment: Aww, well, doesn't matter; Momoko can improvise something I'm sure!

oh WOW, I might actually start cooking with recipes like these! Looks really yummy!

If you have an Asian market nearby, in the gelatin section, they also sell packages of almond jello, coconut jello, and other desserts. It's like buying a Jell-O package where there's already the power, sugar, and flavoring pre-measured and all you have to do is add the liquid, in this case the water and milk.

However, making almond jello from scratch isn't hard at all.

how fun, i love your cooking series! i think i will try this recipe using agar agar and almond milk.

The cooking series really is great fun to follow!

Not only are we learning to cook Re-ment at full scale but the photos and captions/speech bubbles are funny.

elfinity wrote:oh WOW, I might actually start cooking with recipes like these! Looks really yummy!

ha!
my thoughts exactly