Gelatin desserts or jello can be made with the simplest ingredients or be elevated by using fresh ripened fruits. These desserts not only are flavorful but also doesn’t contain any type of fat and the sugar can be substituted with any artificial sweetener (artificial sweetener usually tints the flavor in other types of desserts).
These fruit-filled gelatin desserts must use fruits that are soft in texture with uncomplicated flavors and also at their ripest. Bing and Rainer cherries, mango, white peach, loquat, green and purple grapes, litchi, mandarin orange, pear, strawberry, raspberry, melon, or kiwi are all tasty additions.
Besides the yummy fruit, this dessert also requires the use of gelatin powder. Agar agar, pectin, and gelatine are great choices. It is even more convenient to use packaged gelatin powder such as Jell-O. I used konjac jelly powder in this recipe to get the glistening translucent gelatin dessert with firm yet jiggly texture.
Lemon juice is also quite important when making this dessert. It gives the gelatin a slight tartness and also keeps the fruit from oxidizing. But too much lemon juice will affect gelatin’s ability to solidify then more gelatin powder should be added to retain the balance.
If you are not making the gelatin dessert for kids, add some wine or liqueur. Fruit matches well with wine or spirits.
There is no preservative in this homemade dessert, so it must be refrigerated and consumed in a few days.
Here is a simple formula using konjac jelly powder:
Fruit : Gelatin Powder : Sugar : Water = 15 : 1 : 6-7 : 30
Preparation
Clean and cut the fruit then find out the net weight.
Gelatin powder: 1/15 of the fruit weight. Sugar: 6 – 7 times the weight of gelatin powder. Basically, 150 g of fruit needs 10 g of gelatin powder and 60 – 70 g of sugar.
The amount of water is 2 times the weight of the fruit. Besides using water, fruit juice, fruit puree, lemon juice, and wine/liqueur can also be considered. The dessert is too plain with only water but too much fruit puree muddles the gelatin which masks the fruit pieces. The best result is shown in the picture below: semi translucent best show cases the beauty of the gelatin dessert.
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White Peach Gelatin Dessert
Yield: 6
Ingredients
White peach – 360 g net weight (around 2 peaches)
Freshly squeezed lemon juice – 40 g
Water and white peach puree – 680 g combined weight
Konjac jelly powder – 24 g (see note 1)
Sugar – 144 ~ 168 g
Jello molds or any containers of your choice – 6
Steps
1) Carefully remove the skin of the white peaches then pit them. Cut each peach into 3 pieces. Each piece is about 60 g.
2) Add lemon juice to the peach pieces to prevent them from browning (oxidizing).
3) If there is any extra peach left, puree them then add enough water to get a total of 680 g.
4) Whisk the jelly powder and sugar together in a sauce pan then add the fruit water from step 3. Combine well.
5) Heat the mixture with low heat until it boils. Turn the heat off.
6) Add the lemon juice marinated peach pieces to the sauce pan and stir.
7) When the fruit gelatin mixture is cool to the touch, spoon the peach into each of the container then add some gelatin liquid to the container until half full (see note 2).
8) Refrigerate until firm.
9) If the remaining gelatin liquid has solidified at this point, warm them up with low heat (no need to bring to a boil).
10)Add the warm gelatin liquid to the half-finished gelatin until it is completely filled and covers the fruit. Refrigerate again until the whole gelatin is firm.
Note 1:
konjac jelly powder is sold in Asian supermarkets or you can use Knox® unflavored gelatine (follow manufacturer’s direction to dissolve it).
Note 2:
filling the container to half full first is to prevent the fruit pieces from floating to the top. It won’t be pretty to look up when the gelatin is inverted out of the mold.
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Mango Gelatin Dessert
Yield: 6
Follow the same ingredient’s list and steps in white peach gelatin dessert. Cut the mango into dices and extra pieces are pureed. Use less lemon juice because mango has a more pronounced flavor then white peach.
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Cherry Gelatin Dessert
Yield: 6
Ingredients
Cherry – 360 g net weight
Konjac jelly powder – 24 g (see note 1)
Sugar – 144 ~ 168 g
Water – 620 g
Cherry liqueur – 60 g (see note 3)
Freshly squeezed lemon juice – 40 g
Jello molds or any containers of your choice – 6
Steps
1) Pit the cherries. If you don’t have a cherry pitter, use a chopstick to poke the pit out the cherry.
2) Follow the same steps in white peach gelatin dessert. Only add the cherries, cherry brandy, and lemon juice off the heat.
Note 3: cherry brandy is a burgundy colored sweet wine. Use rum if you can’t find cherry brandy.
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Green Plum Gelatin Dessert
Yield: 6
Follow the same ingredient’s list and steps in cherry gelatin dessert. Use white wine instead of cherry brandy. You can even add a little bit of green food coloring to give it a more intense color.
Plum’s texture is usually not soft enough for gelatin but works well!
If you can’t find green plums, use any plums that are in season.
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Addendum: Kiwi and Pineapple Gelatin Dessert
Fresh kiwi and pineapple contain proteolytic enzymes which digest the gelling proteins in gelatin. It is easy to deactivate the enzymes and retain the vibrant yellow color by cooking the pineapples first but cooked kiwi will lose its bright green color completely. It is not advisable to use too much fresh kiwi juice or puree or you will need to increase the amount of gelatin powder to avoid getting kiwi soup.
The proteolytic enzymes affect each kind of gelatin powder differently. I feel that the konjac jelly powder has a relatively stable reaction to the enzymes. Below is the kiwi gelatin dessert using the standard ratios – Fruit : Gelatin Powder : Sugar : Water = 15 : 1 : 6-7 : 30. There is 10% kiwi puree and a splash of fresh lemon juice in the total water weight. This ratio works perfectly for the kiwi gelatin because the gelatin is able to solidify and it is still jiggly and firm.
My friend sent me a little convenient trick on how to use a teaspoon (a grapefruit spoon is even better) to haul the kiwi out of its own skin: cut the ends of the kiwi, insert the grapefruit spoon right under the skin on one end, turn the spoon all the way around, repeat for the opposite end, the whole fruit will come right out!
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