To try and get my cooking mojo back I decided to play around with an ingredient I've never used before, gelatine. Of course I've made jelly from the well known Rowntree blocks, but never from scratch. First challenge was finding leaf gelatine as the recipe I had was insistent that it had to be leaf gelatine and not the powdered form. I'm also not sure if it would work with vegegel. Most of the supermarkets near me are geared towards people who's idea of cooking is putting a ready-meal in the microwave for 3 min, so sourcing certain ingredients can be a challenge. A good friend came to the rescue when she noticed some for sale in the supermarket she uses.
I was told about this particular Nigella recipe a few months back and have been wanting to give it a try. Gin & tonic is one of my favourite alcoholic drinks, and the fact it can be made into a dessert is even better! The original recipe serves 8. I halved the recipe or Hubby may never make it to work tomorrow due to a hangover. I don't own any fancy jelly moulds so served it in tall glasses instead. Because of the alcohol content it takes a great deal longer to set than normal non-alcoholic jelly.
It had a lovely refreshing taste with a pleasing G&T kick. I believe a proper G&T should have lime and not lemon in it so next time may replace the 1 lemon for 3 limes. It would be a perfect BBQ dessert for adults. I'm thinking of using the same technique to make a Pimms jelly with the traditional Pimms fruit suspended in it for my Birthday get together at the weekend.
Gin & Tonic Jelly
Makes around 650ml of jelly (serves 2-4)
150ml plus 25ml water
150g caster sugar
juice and zest of 1 lemon
200ml tonic water (don't use slimline, it won't work)
125ml gin
4 sheets of leaf gelatine
1) Put 150ml of the water and the sugar in a saucepan. Boil for 5 min, take off the heat, add lemon zest and allow in infuse for 15 min.
2) Strain into a measuring jug. Add lemon juice, gin and tonic. It should reach the 600ml mark. If not top up with either more lemon juice, gin or tonic.
3) Soak the leaf gelatine in a bowl of cold water for 5 min. Squeeze out the water from the gelatine, then whisk gelatine into 25ml of boiling water. Add a small amount of the lemon syrup to the gelatine then pour this back into the jug of lemon syrup. Stir to ensure it is well combined.
4) Pour into glasses or lightly greased jelly mould. Put in fridge and allow to set for 6 hours.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Gin & Tonic Jelly
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
My last experiment with alcoholic jelly ended in disaster - I was making vodka jelly to celebrate finishing Uni - unfortunately it didn't set (probably used too much vodka)! The GandT looks fantastic - very sophisticated! - however, the Pimms sounds even better. I love Pimms, shame the weather here at the moment isn't more conducive to drinking it!
Now I've done Vodka Jelly before...! Surely you should use lime and not lemon with G&T?!
The jelly looks great. The Pimms jelly sounds like an excellent idea, can't wait to see the photos. If you ask me your mojo never left.
That's such a good idea and they look beautiful in the glasses too. Would be really interested to hear how the Pimms turns out.
As someone who doesn't watch Nigella, thank you for flagging up this recipe! Gin and tonic jelly... mmmmm.....
Now this looks like quite a jelly! I love peanut butter and jelly on a bagel for breakfast on the weekend...and this looks like a better way to start the day, lol ;-) Seriously though, it sounds delicious
This sounds very cool. I love gin and tonic too. I'll have to keep my eye out for leaf gelatin.
My friends are going to love this! Thanks for the recipe.
Beth - I certainly remember making vodka jelly at uni too!
Mike - in theory, yes it should be lime and next time I'l going to do it with lime.
Serena & Ginger - I'm looking forward to trying the Pimms version.
aforkful & dragon - thank you :)
Mike of Mike's Table - It certainly would make a sophisticated start to the day!
madeline - Hope you manage to find leaf gelatine.
Second to margaritas, I love G and T's, but might try adapting this to be a margarita instead :D
I do like a good G&T, but need to disagree with you on the lime.
The perfect G&T has a slice of each of lemon and lime!
Recipe is bookmarked to try in the future.
Oh, I remember you talking about this before! It looks great and I think Pimms would be lovely.
Y - it would be interesting to try it as a margarita
Hippolyra - lemon & lime, now that is a winning combonation!
Ginger - I'm yet to get around to the Pimms version, but I'm determined to make it this year.
Post a Comment
Thank you for popping by! Feel free to leave a message. I will try my best to reply to all comments.
Jules
x