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| Bottom to top: Margarita, Lemon Drop, Strawberry Daiquiri and Apple-Peach Jelly Shots |
These friendly, colourful weapons of mass destruction are super easy to make!
It's not (yet) the nicest tasting mixtures, but it's palatable. Most importantly, it is also unassuming and lethal - the best combination ever. I've had friends who after consuming 2, declared that they were quite high, muahaha.
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| Don't waste your good vodka. Absolut's more than fine. |
1. Jelly powder: you can get the "local" brands from Giant or Tesco (Nona, or First Choice). It is usable, but the jelly flavour kinda sucks. I personally recommend the imported brand Jell-O. It has the most outstanding colours and the taste is super strong. Also, it is easier to make as it only requires hot water. The local ones require you to BOIL the water - which "burns" off the spirit as water boils at 100 degrees and spirits boil at about 78 degrees. So when you pour the spirit into the boiling hot water, you'll be wasting some of that lovely alcohol. But, there are two problems with Jell-O is that 1) it's not easiest to acquire. You'll need to visit your Jaya Grocer, Village Grocer or one of those super atas grocery shops that cater for expats to get it and 2) it's also 3x the price of the local brands (RM2.XX vs RM6.XX). **Oh, do stay away from raspberry jelly flavours.
2. Hot water
3. Cold water
4. Spirit of your choice - I've experimented using basic vodka which is super easy to combine with anything EXCEPT raspberry which makes it tastes like really bitter awful cough syrup. So don't use raspberry. Rum and tequila can be used too, but we'll go into that later.
5. Plastic shot cups - I managed to get them from Giant Hypermarket.
6. Some cooking oil - olive is great, if not, anything else is fine.
7. A piece of tissue paper
Steps for basic Vodka Jelly:
1. Line plastic shot cups with oil - Take a piece of tissue, dab some oil on it, then rub the entire inner part of the cup with it. This needs to be done so that the jelly can slide out. If it's not oiled, one needs a spoon to eat the entire jelly shot which kind of kills the novelty of "popping" a "shot".
2. Follow instructions on jelly packet, except you need to half the amount of water required to melt the jelly. Ie, for the 3 brands I've worked with (Nona, First Choice & Jell-O), 2 cups of water is required to melt the jelly. Half that amount to 1 cup. Stir until all jelly powder dissolves. For local jelly powders, you need to BOIL the jelly - just dumping it into hot water does not work (tried and tested) because the jelly will not set. Something about chemical compounds needing to be broken and all that.
4. Pour in half a cup of vodka. Continue to stir.
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| Half a cup of vodka being poured into the warm mixture |
5. Then pour the mix into the plastic shot cups.
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| Carefully pour the mixture. It's a sticky mess. |
6. Chuck the cups into the fridge. Give it a couple of hours for it to really set.
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| Gotta make a lot of room in the fridge for this |
If everything done's right, the jelly should slide out of the cup easily and look like this:
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| Screwdriver = Orange jelly + vodka |
7. Serve COLD and still in the cup. Preferably at parties. And get everyone high and happy! One packet of jelly serves approx. 14 full shot cups. If my math is right (and it's quite bad actually), each cup contains about 1/3 parts of vodka :P
(Note: Jellies MUST be kept cold. We left a couple of jelly shots out for too the long once and the whole thing melted and turned into liquid, sticky, slush)
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| My precious Jell-Os |
I had to work with the only flavours I found at Village Grocer @ Jaya33 as I was fast running out of vodka, so instead of just the plain old vodka jelly shots, I tried being creative by making other jelly "cocktail" flavoured shots:
1. Margarita:
- Lime Jell-o
- 1 cup water
- 6 oz. tequila
- 2 oz. sweet and sour mix
2. Strawberry daiquiri:
- Strawberry Jell-o
- 1 cup water
- 6 oz. white rum
- 2 oz. sweet and sour mix
3. Lemon drop shot:
- lemon Jell-o
- 1 cup of water
- 6 oz. vodka
- 2 oz. triple sec
- 1-2 cube sugars
Peach Jell-o is sickeningly sweet - a simple basic vodka will go with it. I tried being creative and mixed it with Orient Apple Absolut - it was more disgusting than the others. Maybe my next visit to the Grocer will allow me to find other flavours to play with.
Hope you enjoy making and tasting it like I did. /hic
More experiments with jellies and all sorts of fruits to come. Stay tuned!
