Welcome to How To Cook That I am Ann Reardon
And it is dessert week on howtocookthat so I am going to show you how to make 3D edible
jelly art.
I first saw jelly flowers a few years ago and thought they were amazing the way that
the flower was 3D through the whole jelly so when you slice it or bite into it you can
see it all the way through.
If you are a regular watcher of howtocookthat you will know that I have three boys and they
weren't actually that impressed when I made flowers in jelly.
So that's when I experimented and made things some spiders and eyeballs and things that
they loved.
So lets start with making a few of the different flowers and then move onto the ones that the
boys liked later.
Firstly you need to make a clear jelly.
To do that you will need some water in a large saucepan, another cup of cold water, some
sugar, gelatin and citric acid.
The citric acid is just for flavour, you can add any flavouring you like but it needs to
be transparent.
All of the ingredient quantities that you need for this recipe are listed on the website
howtocookthat.net there is a link in the description just below this video.
Put the sugar and citric acid into a saucepan with the water and then pour the gelatin over
the cold water that you've got seperate and stir that through until there are no lumps
then leave it to one side for all the water to absorb into that gelatin.
If you can't have gelatin for religious reasons then try looking for halal gel which is a
pig free gelatin or if you are vegan then search for a product called vegegel which
is a vegetarian alternative.
Heat the sugar and the water and citric acid until the sugar is completely dissolved and
that should be just when it's starting to boil.
Remove that saucepan from the heat and add in your gelatin which will now look thick
like this.
Once you've put it in continue to stir it until it is completely dissolved so we don't
want any lumps or little bits of gelatin in it.
To make it easier to fill the containers I put my mixture into a jug.
You can use any bowls for this but they look best in rounded dome shapes and if they are
clear you'll be able to see what you are doing as you are working.
I am using the dome top of some cupcake cases that I purchased cheaply on ebay, if you have
got glass bowls then you can use those as well.
Then we want to leave those to set, that will take about a couple of hours in the fridge,
and make more than you need so that you've got plenty to experiment on at first when
you are just getting used to what you are doing.
Next we want to make our mixture that will make the actual flowers the actual things
that you can see.
To do that we need to mix together the gelatin and water in a bowl and leave that to absorb
just like we did last time.
Pour your sweetened condensed milk into a measuring jug and then top it up with full
cream milk to make a total of 500ml.
And then pour this into a saucepan and heat it until it comes to a boil.
Remove it from the heat and stir through the gelatin until it is dissolved.
Now we've got that white mixture and if you want different coloured flowers like I do
then pour some of it into a smaller bowl and colour it according to what colour you want
your flower to be.
Now you can buy expensive tools for this which if you are making them all the time as a business
it would be worth the investing in but if you are just having a go you can use homemade
things which give a good result as well.
You can use plastic spoons, you can cut them to different shapes for different petals and
you can use different sized plastic or metal spoons.
Or just a piece of plastic that you can cut it just remember all you are wanting to do
is cut the top shape of your petal from the plastic and leave the back end of it long
so you've got something to hold on to when you are doing it.
To make these you are also going to need a needle preferably with a luer lock so that
the needle locks into place with a twist and so it doesn't come off under pressure because
our mixture is quite thick.
I'll put details of the needle size I used on the website.
If you can get more than one then that's easier because you don't have to wash it every time
you want to change colour.
To fill your syringe take the needle off and draw up the sweetened condensed milk mixture,
because it is quite thick you will find it easier that way than trying to draw it up
through the needle.
Then add the needles back onto the syringe.
Place the piece of platic that you've cut into the jelly and that just makes a slit
into the jelly and then what we are going to do is gently lift the plastic put int he
needle with the colored milk jelly in it and use that to get it right down to the tip of
that cut that we've made into the jelly.
If you've got any excess that come up to the top you can wipe that off using a spoon and
then you can turn your jelly over to see what you have just done.
And then continue this process just making one petal at a time by pushing the plastic
in filling it up with the milk jelly mixture and then keep going around until you are happy
with the look of the flower.
Now when you do this if you space your petals too far out from the centre it is going to
look like they are floating out on their own . So you want to come back to the centre pretty
much each time so pushing from the centre outwards on a flatter angle if you are making
the petals that are around the edge and on a steeper angle if you are making the petals
that are in the middle.
When you are happy with the flower just drip some extra drips of colour on the back in
the centre to fill in any gaps that you have and leave that to set.
To make a carnation you don't need any plastic you can just push the needle in and move it
across at the tip making a jagged edge.
Try and keep the bit where you're inserting the needle fairly still and just moving the
tip of the needle across.
Then continue to do that just like we did last time adding more petals around the edges
and then turning it over, having a look at it and filling in any gaps and then once you've
finished doing that again add some mixture on the back.
You can here actually add some different colored mixture if you just put some drops of it on
and dab with your finger it makes it go into the bottom of those little slits that you've
made so that the petals kind of have two colours to them . And once you are completely happy
with it add some extra mixture onto the base and leave that to set.
You can use spoons to create petals as well just in the same way that we used the plastic,
just gently push it in and lift it slightly and use the needle to fill right down to the
edge of the petal with your colour.
You can experiment here with using different shapes and sizes of spoons to make the different
petals as you go out obviously the petals tend to get larger so you can use a larger
spoon for those ones.
And once you are happy with it just drip some extra colour onto the back and leave that
to set.
Once your flowers are set make up some blue milk mixture.
If your milk mixture has set already you can just reheat that in the microwave or on the
stovetop and the gelatin will melt and it will become liquid again.
Add the blue over the top of the flower in a thin layer and place that back in the fridge.
Lastly for the centre of our flowers we are going to make some yellow and then turn you
flower upside down so that you can see what you are doing and inject the liquid in straight
lines.
To do that you just push the needles straight in push to let some of the mixture out and
pull the needle straight back out.
You need to see what you are doing as you do this so that you don't put a hole through
your petals because you don't want those yellow bits going through petals you want them just
in the middle of your flower.
You can do the same thing with the pink flower that we made too.
And then because this one kind of looks like a water lily I am going to add a mixture of
light and dark blue so it looks a bit like it's floating on water.
Now to make our spiders you are going to need some sort of mold for the body shape of your
spider.
you can do that by carving body shapes out of a carrot or you can get a toy spider and
cutting the legs off it.
If you are carving remember that the spider has two parts to it the head and the body.
Then we want to suspend that in the liquid and to do that I just push tooth picks through
some sticky tape and into the body of the carrot or one toothpick onto the plastic ones
and then sticky tape that tape onto the container and adjust the height so that it sits just
in the jelly.
So you want it right side down and you want it sitting just into the jelly so that the
top is not covered.
Once it is set you can remove your body mold, this will be easier if you run something sharp
around the edge before you try and pull it out.
And then we want to make a brown spidery colour to do that you can either add cocoa powder
to the milk mixture or you can use melted dark chocolate and mix that in.
If you want a pattern on your spider, like here in Australia we have red back spiders,
then you can add that now before we fill it up with the brown.
Other spiders have stripes or spots add all those details and let that set before we fill
up the body.
And then we are just going to fill it all the way up to the top with the browny black
colour.
Then once again leave that aside to set it wont take long for these little details to
set because there is not much of them and you are adding it to something that is already
cold so it may only take about 10 minutes in the fridge.
To do the legs we are going to go from the going from the body put the needle straight
in and squeeze out some mixture as you pull the needle straight back out.
Have a look at a spider picture so you know what angle the legs go on where on the body
they come from and exactly where you want them to end up . Then we want to make the
legs to bend and come back down so that they are not just sticking straight up in the air.
To do that put the needle in where you want the foot to be.
They don't really have feet but you know what I mean and then take it straight in to the
bend of the leg and straight back out again.
Again gently pushing on the mixture in the needle as you do.
Use a spoon to scrape off any excess once you've finished.
And that's how you make some scary spiders
Next to make an eye ball place a small amount of clear jelly at the base of a dome container.
Once the is set we need to make our pupil or the circle of black but we've got dark
brown here.
I am using a piping tip resting on the jelly and dripping some brown mixture into it.
By using the base of the piping tip it will ensure we have a pupil is round and its exactly
centered.
Once that is set you can remove the piping tip and add a larger round object and fill
with blue or green or whatever colour you want he eye to be.
Thanks for watching and don't forget to leave your requests in the comments below.
You can join us next week for chocolate, then the following week is cake and then the week
after that we will be back to dessert again.
And I hope you all have a wonderful week and I will see you soon.
Bye [music by youtube.com/setsailtv]