This delicate little jelly is actually inspired by my one of my attempts at a super fancy type of cake, known as 'entremet', which pretty much gobbled me up and spit me right back out. Delicious but, ouch, not much to look at. Oh well, live, try, fail, and try again, amirite?
But one thing that I took away was this utterly delicious rose infused jelly. Oh my gosh darn! What a taste! The delicate heavenly scent of rose (I LOVE the scent of roses!) captured in a cool quivering jelly state contrasted oh so sweetly with the clear fresh sweetness of the dragon eye fruit, also known as longan. So good had to share!
The other super cool thing is that the dried roses needed to make this jelly are really super cheap to get here in HK. And probably any Chinese dried herb store is going to stock these babies. Or you can get it online here. Chinese use dried roses to brew all kinds of relaxing teas.
Even dried the roses still smell incredible. When buying look for roses that still retain a lot of color, ie haven’t been sitting around for a long time.
The concept of ‘infusion’ is starting to really grip me these days. We recently talked about the incredible results of infusion of lemon peels in our Limoncello post. Here we infuse with a simple sugar syrup and heat. The result? The scents of the rose infused into a simply gorgeous syrup that tastes and smells like a spring garden of roses in full bloom.
After the infusion period the roses are sieved out and the resultant incredibly scented rose syrup is ready to be used, once cooled, to flavor whatever you like. In our case today it will be used for our gorgeous rose jelly.
To make the jelly we need to use gelatin. The gelatin powder needs to be ‘bloomed’ first so it is sprinkled over the room temperature rose infusion. After about 10 mins or so it should look like the photo above.
To bulk out the jelly the original recipe used champagne but, nope, don’t got any of that precious stuff lying around. So I subbed with 7up which I love the taste of, that subtle citrusy tang.
You could sub plain water in here if you like. Just add sugar to sweeten it. With these clear liquids the jelly remains clear so one can see the fruit inside. and then we can color the jelly a rosy pink to match the rose flavor.
This bulking up liquid is heated up until just simmering. Then the rose infusion is added and all is stirred, then coloring is added until the desired rosy pink color is reached. Then it's time to let the jelly mixture cool.
The combination of dragon eye fruit/longan 龍眼 and rose flavor is one of those matches made in food heaven. The same with lychee 荔枝 and rose. Actually, we originally wanted to use the lychee fruit but we were using smaller molds that wouldn’t fit the larger lychee size.
However the dragon eye/ longan has a similar taste and texture to the lychee but is much smaller in size. A most excellent substitute. To find out more about these fruits please see our posts about the dragon eye fruit and the lychee. If you can't find fresh you can use the canned longans.
The dragon eye needs to be washed, peeled and de seeded. To deseed just slide a finger in and around where the stem attaches. Once this area is loosened the seed will just slip out.
Another happy is that I finally got to use these super cute rose silicon molds that I found a while ago. Yay!
Place the fruits in an orderly fashion inside the mold.
Now use a scoop to slowly pour the jelly liquid in. Going slow helps the fruit placement to stay intact. If the fruit floats up there is some bubble of air inside the hollow center and you’re going to have to shake it out.
If you’re using silicon molds remember to place the molds on a tray before pouring the jelly in!! Silicon molds are soft and squish when held so you don’t want to move them around after pouring in the liquids.
Let the jelly chill til set. Your gorgeous looking smooth and yummilicious rose scented fruit filled jellies are ready to eat! Enjoy!
Rose Longan Jelly Recipe
(makes 4 servings) Prep: 8 mins Cooling: 1 hour Setting: 4 hours
Ingredients:
Rose Infusion
- 25 dried rosebuds
- 1/3 cups sugar, 75g
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Jelly
- 1 1/2 tbsp unflavored gelatin
- 1/2 cup rose infusion, cooled
- red food coloring gel
- 2 1/2 cup 7up soda
- 10 fresh dragon eye fruits, (also known as longans 龍眼) or canned longans
Directions:
Add water and sugar to small pot. Heat until the mixture boils. Add rose buds, cover, take off heat, and let infuse for 1 hour. Strain out roses and discard. You should be left with 1/2 cup of rose infusion. Let the infusion cool down to room temperature and add vanilla.
Sprinkle gelatin evenly over the cooled rose infusion. Let the gelatin 'bloom' for 5 mins until the powder has absorbed liquid.
Heat the 7up until just simmering. Take off heat, add rose infusion and stir til thoroughly mixed. Add red food coloring gel tiny bit by tiny until a light pink color is achieved in the mixture. Let cool to room temp.
Wash, peel and deseed the dragon eye. Place dragon eyes into your jelly molds. If using silicon molds place the molds onto a tray that will fit in the fridge.
Pour the jelly mixture into the molds. You may have to shake the dragon eyes a bit to release any air trapped in the center so that the fruit will settle. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or until the jelly is set.
To serve prepare a bowl of very warm water. Dip in the jelly molds almost to the top and hold for 5 secs. Place a plate over mold, flip over and gently shake the jelly out. If the jelly still holds, repeat previous step. Enjoy the roses!
Fabulous Florals at The Hong Kong Cookery:
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