Grapefruit, Lemon, and Mint Jello

As have mentioned in one of the previous posts about buying a whole bunch of books from Eslite, one of the books I have purchased was a book about making dessert cups, which includes jellos, puddings, and more. For those who can read Chinese, here is the book. It is a great book with lots of details, pictures (of each step!), and even a CD of demo videos. I have also bought a lot of sheet gelatin and cute glass cups from Taiwan in preparation to make these wonderful looking desserts. The sheet gelatin used in this book are 2.5g each, so that will be the case for all the desserts from this book. For those of you from Vancouver that don't want to buy sheet gelatin from Amazon or Taiwan, you can buy them from Galloway's Specialty Foods. I haven't tried these personally, so I don't know if the setting power would be the same. If Galloway's is still not the option for you, you can choose to buy Knox powder gelatin from Superstore with the ratio of 4 sheets = 0.25oz or 7.2g powder (source). Supposedly desserts made with sheet gelatin taste "purer" because powdered gelatin has a fishy taste to it. I don't have enough experience so I don't know. Anyhow, let's get on with the dessert.


The golden standard:

Picture from the book

Ingredients:

Grapefruit jello

• 4.5 sheets of gelatin
• 100g cold water (recipe calls for cold boiled water, but our water is safe from the tap, so I just use tap water)
• 30g granulated sugar
• 250g grapefruit juice
• 30g honey

Lemon & mint jello

• 2 sheets of gelatin
• 100g cold water
• 30g granulated sugar
• 1g mint leaves
• 15g lemon juice
• 70g grapefruit flesh

Procedure:

Grapefruit juice & flesh:

Courtesy of legourmettv on Youtube.com. I used about 4 grapefruits. You can then proceed to use these segmented flesh to produce juice and for decoration later.

Grapefruit jello

1. Soften the 4.5 sheets of gelatin in an ice water bath
2. Melt the 30g of granulated sugar in the 100g of cold water using low heat
3. Turn off the stove
4. Melt the gelatin in the sugar water
5. Stir in the 250g of grapefruit juice
6. Stir in the 30g of honey
7. Chill the entire mixture in an ice water bath while constantly stirring to prevent the edges from solidifying. 
8. Pour mixture into individual cups until about 70% full
9. Let the jello solidify in the fridge while we prepare the other part

Lemon & mint jello

1. Soften the 2 sheets of gelatin in an ice water bath
2. Add the 1g of mint leaves and the 30g of granulated sugar in 100g of cold water
3. Melt the sugar using low heat
4. Turn off the stove
5. Melt the gelatin in the sugar & mint mixture
6. Stir in the 15g of lemon juice
7. Get rid of the mint leaves by pouring the mixture through a sieve or picking the leaves out by chopsticks
8. Put the grapefruit segments on the now solidified grapefruit jello
9. Pour the lemon-mint jello mixture on top
10. Chill the whole thing

This is what I got! Pretty close to the pictures, so it was a success!