- [Alvin] This episode is sponsored by Bokksu.
Introduce your friends to premium
and authentic Japanese snacks that will be sure to stand out
amongst the candy canes
and chocolate boxes this holiday season.
Check the link in the description.
(suspenseful music)
- If you want this, then come and get it!
(monster gurgling and sighing)
- He ate it!
How could he just eat the dragon ball?
(ball whooshing and bubbling)
(graphics swishing)
(monster grunting)
(balls popping)
He's gonna eat 'em all!
(balls swishing)
(balls plopping)
(suspenseful music intensifies)
(balls plopping)
(monster burping and sighing)
(monster shouting) (graphics whooshing)
- [People] Ah!
(soft lo-fi music)
- [Alvin] Welcome back to
another episode of "Anime with Alvin."
This time, we're gonna be making dragon balls
from "Dragon Ball GT."
Now, in the episode, dragon balls are clearly consumed,
so I'm gonna use that as an excuse to make dragon balls
'cause honestly, that sounds pretty fun.
Because of the mystical
and powerful nature of the dragon balls, I'm assuming
that if it were to be edible, it would have to be made
from pretty amazing things.
So, in this little vial here, I have procured
the sap of the Dracaena cinnabari, or the dragon blood tree.
It is a dragon tree native to Socotra Archipelago,
part of Yemen located in the Arabian Sea.
It's used in dyes, medicine,
and also used to be used for ritual magic and alchemy.
We made sure to confirm that this was the edible version,
which came in a very blank labeled package.
So, we're just gonna go ahead and use it.
Now the question is, how do you make edible dragon balls?
So, over here, I'm grinding down 100 grams of mastic,
a resin obtained from the mastic tree,
also known as The Tears of Chios.
After grinding it down into a powder,
we're gonna add in 50 grams of just straight up
unflavored gelatin, and make sure that's all in there.
This is going to go into approximately 700 grams of water
until we dissolve this,
and we get a nice solution that we can set.
To be fairly honest, we're really eyeballing this year.
There's no real recipe out there, so we try
to make sure the ratios were correct
with the gelatin and the water.
The mastic and gelatin mixture is turning into
a weird little foam
that's kind of collecting on the surface of this water,
and not really dissolving into it as I'd hoped.
With the help of Rachel, we're gonna go take that aside
and try again because this didn't work.
Maybe the water was a little bit too hot on that one.
So, we're gonna go ahead and try this again.
Grinding down 100 grams of mastic,
but this time, adding in 80 grams of orange flavored jello
to give that nice flavor and color to these dragon ball.
This time, instead of dumping it into boiling hot water,
we're gonna heat up the water first,
and then dump this into a slightly smaller bowl,
so that the temperature can cool down a little bit.
After giving this a nice mix
and admiring the hue that our water has turned into,
we're gonna strain this through a fine mesh sieve,
because there's a little bit of chunks of mastics
that I didn't grind on perfectly.
Pass this once more through a cheesecloth,
just to get rid of any small remaining particles,
'cause you do want our dragon balls to be shiny and perfect.
Then, we're gonna drop in
a couple drops of our dragon's blood sap that's gonna go in.
It doesn't really smell like too much, kind of herbal,
and a little bit sticky.
So, we're gonna give that nice whisk,
and realize that I think we should probably use
an immersion blender for this scenario.
So, after giving that a couple of spins
and making sure that the dragon's blood
is now evenly dispersed among our mixture,
we're gonna divide this into
six evenly spherical-shaped bowls that we got online.
These are going to get filled halfway
before we add our stars in.
And then, we're gonna go let these rest in the fridge
until they are nicely set.
The dragon balls have tiny glowing stars in them
from one to seven.
So, I'm gonna take a red bell pepper,
we're gonna cut these into thin strips while taking out
the flesh of the pepper.
We mostly just want that one
to two millimeters from the skin inwards,
'cause we'd want this to stay as solid red as possible.
None of that inner fleshy stuff,
probably use the leftovers for fried rice or something.
We are missing one of the dragon balls,
which is quite a shame,
because if I just had it,
I could have wished for anything in the world.
10 minutes have passed, and I've only made two.
And judging by the math of this thing, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
and a second batch, I'm going to need to make 42 stars.
Yeah, this is a lot longer than I thought.
We are going to have to reevaluate
our strategy for this approach.
Okay, so it seems like there is a magic shining upon us
because Kendall found a tiny little star cutter
for a pastry tool that was just sitting in the cabinet,
so this is the exact thing we're gonna use to save me
a lot of time just bending over and cutting these stars.
But still cutting out 42 of these things
is a little bit more work than I anticipated.
That's okay, we have our stars.
Thinking back though, I'm gonna go ahead
and make a backup batch,
because honestly, there was a lot of mastic
that was sieved out,
and I'm not sure that's gonna have enough gelatin
or setting agent to make this mixture
set the way that I want to.
So, we're gonna do a safety batch
with just straight up a whole entire packet of orange jello,
just like how you make it
on the instructions on the back of the box.
And this is also going to get evenly dispersed
among six spherical molds.
I realized off camera that the mixture that we used
in that first mastic batch clearly wasn't setting,
because a lot of the mastic
had just not been in the actual mixture.
So, we're gonna go ahead and proceed with the orange jello
and dragon's blood batch.
I'm placing the stars down on these
little half formed dragon balls.
One through six,
and after that, placing the lid on top
then filling these up the rest of the way
with the remaining mixture that we have.
And I did notice that
after I poured them through, I looked at them briefly
right before they went into the fridge,
and it seems like the stars floated
to the surface of the mold, which would not make them
look very pretty.
I definitely made a mistake by not pushing the stars
into the actual gelatin mixture itself,
so I'm gonna have to go ahead,
and we'll decant all of these liquid halves
back into the container,
and rearrange these stars back into their proper form.
After some pushing, some shimming,
and a lot of maneuvering back and forth,
we now have our dragon balls completely set
with our stars placed right in the middle, pushed very deep,
and the liquid halves filled to the top.
These are gonna go chill in the fridge overnight.
It is now day two,
let's bring out these and see how they look!
Oh, it seems like as I was pouring for one of these,
there was a little air bubble
that prevented the liquid from going down,
and it made it seem like the mold was filled,
when in fact, the mold was not filled.
So, there is now half of a dragon ball missing.
Oh, here's number two.
Both halves of the dragon balls
are still not with each other.
They seem to have been clinging to their respective halves.
That's okay, we're gonna go ahead
and shimmy these out with the rubber spatula.
Try to play some Tetris here.
We now repeat the remaining process
with the other four dragon balls.
Yep, seems like the dragon balls that don't like
to be one whole entire shiny thing as I'd anticipated.
But that tracks, because usually,
the dragon balls are spread
and split for a reason, or else they're too powerful.
After unearthing all the dragon balls as best as we can,
here are the dragon balls presented in a little container
as I think they should be.
As dragon balls are quite mystical objects,
and no ordinary plate will do them justice.
So, here's a little bamboo steamer basket,
because it looks cooler.
Not as full as I would hope they'd be,
and the stars, well, they're a little bit off
'cause I forgot to push them down in the correct form,
but I'm still pretty happy with the way they look.
So, this is our version of the dragon balls
from "Dragon Ball GT," and an edible version
that you don't actually have to swallow completely
in order to get powers.
Let's go ahead and take one of the fuller ones,
and give it a big bite.
That tastes like orange jello with a hint of herbalness,
probably from the dragon's blood.
But the orange jello actually goes surprisingly well
with the red pepper.
There's something about that
that's just really surprisingly nice.
I can feel the effects taking effect.
I'm now powering up.
It's getting close.
Yep, it is now over 9,000,
I'm ready to fight Shenron himself, goodbye everybody,
instant transmission, out.
Thanks again to our friends over at Bokksu
for sponsoring this episode.
Bokksu is a premium Japanese snack box
that works at family businesses all over Japan
to deliver a new theme of treats every month.
Holiday gift giving is hard enough.
So, when I find a surefire crowd pleaser that is backed
by an ethical mission like Bokksu,
it's a no brainer for me.
You'll get to experience flavors
you probably never even heard of before, such as sudachi
and these little tempura chips.
It's also very fun to watch people try a box
whose white chocolate strawberry for the first time,
because the texture is so unique.
I gifted a box to my mom because she loves sweet
and salty snacks from all over the world,
and I can't wait to see her reaction.
So if you want to give
the gift of authentic Japanese snacks
and support our channel.
click the link in the description and use my code Alvin
to get $15 off your first Bokksu order.
(lo-fi music intensifies)