Rose Dragon Eye Jelly 龍眼玫瑰茶果凍

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!

Lychee Jam

Oh jam it!  Presenting our delicately sweet and tenderly lush pink jam made from the Queen of Fruits the luscious Lychee 荔枝!

That's right my friends it's time to run to your nearest Chinese market and stock up on these seasonal beauties while they last.  We love lychees way too much in this house and always end up indulging a bit too much on them.  But heck why not they only come around once a year!  This year though we got a gift of a whole box full of lychees, a whole boxful!  What to do with a whole boxful of lychee?  

After eating as much as we could I decided to turn some of it into a batch of our Luscious Lychee Ice Cream (our most favorite homemade fruit ice cream!) and the rest I decided to try to make a Lychee fruit jam, which I have never attempted before.  

After a nervous planning and setting out, gosh darn it, the results are totally worth the effort, our homemade Lychee Jam came out tinted a gorgeous rosy pink and tasted ever so intensely of sweet, fresh lychee flavor with a delicate fragrance of summer florals!  Absolutely yummillicious!

Luscious Lychee Ice Cream

I remind all our dear readers that this is the time of year for the Queen of Summer Fruits, the lovely Lychee!  We've been gorging ourselves on luscious, juicy lychees, desperate to gobble down as many as we can before they disappear until next year.  We got inspired by the abundance of lychee and the hot sweltering temperatures of the summer to make our favorite homemade summer treat, ICE CREAM!  

You've got to check out our Lychee Ice Cream, 荔枝雪糕, a soft luscious velvety ice cream packed through and through with delectable real lychee flavor and aroma.  We think it's the best ice cream we've ever made...voted our new family favorite ice cream flavor!

Lychee Time of the Year! 荔枝 - 糯米糍

Hey everyone,  the Queen is back, it's lychee time of the year!  Those gorgeous, sexy, succulent, rose tinged fruits of the the Chinese summer.  Lychee is one of our favorite summer fruits, so juicy, so luscious, so distinctive in taste that 'lychee' has become a flavor in its own right.  

We have noticed the lychee's appearance for a couple of weeks, a bit small and green tinged at first, and we've been waiting for them to get bigger and rosier.  Well, we finally went for a batch yesterday and boy, oh boy, they were perfect!  It's Lychee Time of the Year!

Lychee Fruit Season is Here! 荔枝 - 糯米糍

Lychee season is here!  Yummy yeah!!  The glorious and sexy lychee fruit, beloved by Chinese emperors past, is the herald of real summer here in Hong Kong and the southern China regions.  When one starts to see mounds of these luscious red fruit around you know that 1) the heat is here to stay and 2) that you can start indulging in tasty revels of sun kissed summer fruits.

And of course the Queen of Summer Fruits here is none other than the lovely Lychee fruit, or 荔枝.  And...psst...my fruit vendor told me just the other day that its been a bumper year for the lychee fruit and it's the best crop in terms of sweetest that they've had in many, many years!

Lychee Popsicle 荔枝雪條

There's nothing that can cool you down on a hot summer's day like a icy cold popsicle.  I remember traveling in the earlier days in China when there was very little in the way of proper air conditioning (actually not just little but none!) but there was always the red bean popsicle vendor just around the corner.  

Adults and children both would sit in what shade they could find and cool their whole body down by eating the delicious icy treats.  Yummy!  What a fun and natural way to cool down!