Chinese Food Recipes - Delicious Almond Jelly Desssert

Chinese Almond Jelly

This is a really interesting Chinese Food dessert recipe. It is a very refreshing dessert served after a hot and spicy Szechwan dish.

You can choose to make the jelly either soft and spoonable or hard and cuttable into shapes. If you cut the Jelly into diamond shapes you can, for example, present your Chinese Food recipe as a flower, using the diamonds as petals and fruit such as strawberries, lychees or raspberries as the middle of the flower. It makes a stunning table centrepiece and its very edible too!!.

For a vegetarian version of this Chinese Food recipe you can substitute the gelatine with agar - agar. This is a processed gelatine derived from dried seaweed. It is a bit more difficult to work with than gelatine as it has to be dissolved very slowly in boiling water.

Ingredients

For a firm jelly - 6 teaspoons gelatine
For a soft jelly - 4 teaspoons gelatine

800 ml boiling water
200 ml evaporated milk
Half cup sugar
2 teaspoons almond essence (don't use artificial flavour)

Fruit to decorate - try strawberries, lychees, blueberries or raspberries. Or a few slivers of crystallised ginger.

Method

Boil the water. Put 200 ml of the boiling water in a glass measuring jug. Add the gelatine. Stir until completely dissolved. Add the rest of the water, the sugar, and the evaporated milk. Stir thoroughly until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add one teaspoon of the almond essence and stir. Taste. Add another teaspoon of essence if desired.

Pour into a shallow bowl - so that jelly is about 1 inch deep. Chill in refrigerator until the jelly is set.

Once set remove the jelly from the fridge. Using a sharp knife cut the jelly in to diamond shapes. Assemble these in the shape of flower on a flat plate.

Fill the center of the flower with your choice of fruit.

Admire your handiwork and enjoy your Chinese Food Recipe Dessert.