Berries in Shiraz Jelly (South Africa)

I do not drink red wine.  I wouldn't say that I hate it, but I don't like it and don't drink it.  But I do like berries and jelly so this one wasn't too horrible an idea for me.  Soph on the other had, hates jelly. I think because it wobbles but either way, she was definitely not looking forward to this one.  The recipe looked quite simple though so we figured we'd crack on and get it done sooner rather than later. 

We'd only ever made jelly bought from the shops ready-flavoured when we were kids, never made our own flavouring and added geletine so it was a new experience for us at least. 

We made one small alteration to the recipe in that, where Allegra uses a large jelly mould, we used small glasses to make individual jellies in.  We decided they would be easier to serve and much faster to set. 

As for the recipe itself, we stuck to it word for word. Basically, it's mulled wine mixed with gelatine and poured over some berries.  To make sure that the berries stay at the bottom of the mould (so that they're visible at the top of the jelly once it's turned out), you pour a small quantity of the jelly in first, let that set in the fridge for an hour or so, and then pour in the rest and put it back in the fridge to set. 

Sounds simple enough but it was made more complicated by my absent-mindedly ignoring the weight measurement of the gelatine and going off the sheet quantity written in the book (which turned out to be only half as much as we actually needed).  

So, round one of the jelly making was quite the disaster.  The berries floated to the surface and the jelly barely set. It looked like a substance I can only describe as goop. Needless to say, none of us were about to eat this mess, so we started over - with closer supervision from Soph. 

Round two worked infinitely better.  The berries stayed put and the jelly set within about two hours.  We did leave it longer though since none of us fancied trying this dish at two o'clock in the afternoon.  

Instead, our desert that evening was red wine berry jelly.  My brother-in-law loved it so it scored precisely one point.  As expected, I found it tasted rather too much like red wine for my liking, and Soph couldn't bring herself to eat more than two or three spoonfulls of this weirdly textured dessert.  

I would say however that, for people who like red wine and don't mind the wobbly texture of jelly, it's probably a very nice dish to try out. It's very simple to make and not at all time consuming if you do it right the first time.