Lychee and Kiwi Jellies

If anyone has ever been to a Chinese market, they have probably seen bucket-like jars filled with jelly candies, usually containing lychee. These are very popular snacks and are made with agar agar, a extract from certain types of seaweed. The jelly made from this is not like Jello, it's still jelly like, but doesnt melt when it gets hot. It can be made into a lot of flavors and cream, milk or coconut milk can be added to create a creamy taste. Popular kinds of recipes are mago puddings and almond flavored jelly served with fruit.

Here, I have some powdered agar agar. It's sold in powdered and strand form; both need to be dissolved completely. Boil some water; I also opened a can of lychees and added the syrup to the boiling water. My final product came out a little too sweet because I forgot that the powdered agar agar had sugar added into it. Some do, some don't. Make sure you check.

 

Being Asian, we have a ton of little cups that make perfect molds and containers. I pulled out some and got some larger cups for the different colors and flavors.

I had red, green and blue dyes so i added little amounts of those to the agar agar mixes. Some food color containers have a little top that can dispense one drop at a time, but there are also ones that just have a screw-off top. These can be tricky to pour, so just dip the end of a chopstick or toothpick in and mix it into the agar agar.

I also added a little coconut milk to one of the cups so the the jelly could be a little creamy.

Work fast when working with containters this small. Pour them before the jelly sets. It helps a lot to plan before you color and pour everything. I decided that next time I will probably not use blue... it just does not look as appealing as green or red.

I also cut up some kiwi and stacked them in the flute cups. I also added lychee pieces to some of the other jellies.

Ta-Da! Try it at home, it's fun! I made all these kinda tiny, perfect to a little treat when you want something sweet.