It's almost Chinese New Year! The Lunar New Year falls on Monday, January 26, this year, and we're eager to talk about the food. Chinese New Year may be one of the most food-centric holidays in the world; the variety, significance, and sheer quantity of food at New Year celebrations is overwhelming! We'll have more good ideas and recipe links for Chinese New Year later today, but first: here is a favorite from our archives with updated pictorial instructions.
Blood orange jelly smiles are a fun, easy, and (bonus!) rather healthy treat for New Year celebrations. Here is how to make them.
This idea and recipe were originally shared with us by Sarah from San Francisco.
• Recipe: Blood Orange Jelly Smiles
I've made these several times now, and I wanted to update the instructions with more tips and notes I've picked up.
How To Make Blood Orange Jelly Smiles
1. Buy a sack of blood oranges. These are the most dramatic fruit for this recipe, because of their deep red flesh. But you can also use any citrus; we've used tangerines and navel oranges too. Blood oranges can often be found for cheap at Trader Joe's.
2. Get some plain gelatin. No Jell-O here! This recipe is very healthy because it uses the fruit juice plus plain, unsweetened gelatin. You can find this in the baking aisle near the regular Jell-O. Vegetarians: I haven't tried vegetarian alternatives, like agar-agar; if anyone has, please let us know.
3. Cut 6 oranges in half. This how-to will show you how to make six oranges into jelly smiles; just multiply if you want to do more.
4. Squeeze out the juice. Here's where this project can be a little tricky. You want to squeeze out as much juice as possible without damaging the orange peel. I've tried several methods, and the best is a traditional manual juicer. Don't use the high-powered squeeze juicer or an electric juicer; you'll probably tear the peel. Go slowly, and twist each orange half so it's as clean as possible.
5. Scrape out any extra strings or flesh. Again, you want the peel intact, so if you can't get everything out, it's OK. A little extra orange flesh won't mess this up.
6. Put each orange peel shell into a muffin tin. This will hold them steady when you pour in the gelatin.
7. Soften the gelatin. Measure 1/4 cup cold water in a glass measuring cup. Sprinkle 1 packet of plain gelatin into the water and let it sit.
8. Heat the orange juice to boiling. Measure out about 3/4 cup of the juice. You don't need to be terribly precise: as long as it's between about 3/4 and 1 cup, you're fine. Also, this is where you can add a little sugar or honey, if you want to sweeten the juice. Taste and sweeten as needed. Bring the juice to a boil.
9. Mix gelatin and juice. Take the boiling juice off the heat and whisk in the gelatin. Pour the juice and gelatin mixture back into the glass measuring cup.
10. Fill orange peel shells. Fill each orange peel cup with the gelatin mixture, and put the muffin tins into the fridge to cool. The orange jelly will need 2-3 hours to set completely.
11. Trim, slice, and serve! The filling should firm up and be quite stiff. Once it is hard enough, slice into wedges. If you want them to look extra neat, you can trim off any extra peel above the jelly. I like to serve these side-by-side with real orange slices. People always do a double-take.
12. Enjoy your jelly smiles!
....And then clean up! I always make a mess when I make these!
Related: Recipe: D.I.Y. Fruity Gumdrops
(Images: Faith Durand)
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That blood orange juice looks goood.
Too fun, although I find blood orange peel seems weaker than than of regular oranges and more likely to crack while I'm juicing----still this is going on the to do list.
sally599 - I totally agree. I think the peels are softer, perhaps?
Weren't these blood orange jellies on here a year or so ago?
These are adorable. But I've already got a sweet rice cake in the works. Still... hmmm...
@ Comicgeek:
"here is a favorite from our archives with updated pictorial instructions"
Yes, the original instructions left out a couple things I had to figure out on my own, so I thought I'd update it.
I've seen how to do that with Jello, but this looks so much better!
Thanks for the interesting post :)
I'm living in Argentina, so I can't be certain if the gelatin will come in the same packages... (they tend to sell things from bulk containers, in takeaway bags with no labels).
What is the measurement needed?
Thanks again :)
Awesome pictorial!
I checked stop & shop's online store to see what the standard size of an envelope of gelatin was. They said one ounce.
So, I converted 1 ounce to about 28 grams. The little bag I bought was 50 grams, so I dumped out a bit more than half into the cold water. Unfortunately, the taste of the gelatin forcefully overpowered the taste of the orange, which I had boiled with some honey.
I may have used too much gelatin, I will try it again in a while with less.
For me, what took a very long time was properly cleaning the oranges. I found that, after taking out most of the pulp, if you flip up the wet skin near the middle of the bottom of the orange half, you can peel down to a clean white surface, one segment at a time.
Even though the result was inedible in my case, it was still pretty cool looking :)
Thanks
These may be delicious, but I'll never know. They just look too... I don't know, creepy.
maddo: 1 oz is the total weight of my box of Knox gelatin, which contains 5 (?) envelopes. So one envelope would be a little less than 6 grams.
Correction--the box has 4 envelopes so each one would have 7 grams.
Hi everyone,
I was inspired once I read this, because of the simplicity of the recipe and how great it looks. As soon as I got to work this morning, I gathered 6 oranges (no blood-oranges on hand) and I grabbed the tin of Agar-Agar and went to work. Instead of adding honey or lots of sugar (I did add a small handfull for taste), I mixed my freshly squeezed orange juice with fresh bottled orange juice. Due to the variety of oranges used in quality pure orange juices, it gives it a less acidic taste. For your information, Tropicana uses the same 6 varieties in every juice, that's how it gets its great taste.
For 1 litre of juice (fresh from my oranges bottle orange juice), my chef recommended using 3.5 grams of the powder, and I did just that. I brought the liquid and sugar mixture to a boil, at this point added the agar, and let it boil for 2 minutes while gently stirring/whisking. After 2 minutes, I passed the juice in the fine chinois, and filled my halved oranges with the liquid, and let it sit for 2 hours.
The result...a wonderful tasting jelly, with an amazing color. My worry was that I was not going to be able to cut through it, but I used a small serrated tomato knife to cut though it, peel side first, and it gave it a clean cut, without hurting the jelly. The only thing I would to different is serve it at a colder temperature then what I tried, which was at 4 degrees Celsius. I should have used the blast chiller/cooler, and the result would have been more refreshing.
...oh yeah and I completely removed the inside skin with a paring knife before filling my halved oranges, that way no skin or pulp would mix in with the jelly...!
Anybody add Grand Marnier to this?? Maybe just 1-2 tablespoons? I was thinking of serving them as a palate cleanser.
Awesome! I'm definitely going to try this the next time I cook for friends and/or family. Thanks! Maybe I'll use konnyaku powder instead - more bounce!