They’re part of Heston’s Fantastical Food Christmas episode, but when we saw Heston’s Edible Christmas fairy Lights recipe on the Channel 4 website we knew we had to serve them as part of our early Christmas Dinner.
Another good name for this recipe would be “Let’s Spend Thirty Quid at Muji”, because that’s the only place we found suitable moulds for the baubles. Specifically, their Marble Silicone Ice Cube Tray. We also picked up their trendily minimalist felt tree to hang the baubles on, which was a mistake (more on this later). Muji also sell clear-white LED lights, the third essential component, but we bought ours at a discount store for half their price.
SUMMARY
Recipe: Heston’s Edible Christmas Fairy Lights recipe
Special Equipment: Silicone mould, LED lights, Mini Christmas Tree
Special Ingredients: Citric Acid
Time: 30 minutes plus overnight cooling & chilling
Cost: Under £5 (or up to £35 if you need to buy all the equipment)
Serves: Loads
Difficulty: Medium
METHOD
The ingredients list isn’t all that complicated. We used a drop of orange flavouring in place of mandarin essential oil, and omitted the citric acid because, well, which-the-hell shelf of Leigh Morrissons is that on?
Step 1: Orange Juice Reduction
Very easy: Put jug on scales. Put juice in pan. Keep tipping juice into jug until scales read 200.
When filling the moulds ensure you do it on a flat surface, and that each sphere is filled all the way to the top. We’d recommend overfilling if possible, to ensure each bauble is as full round as possible. Some of ours could’ve done with being rounder.
Step 2: Unmoulding
Our first bauble was a disaster. Chunks of the jelly stayed stuck to the inside of the mould, giving the bauble a rough, broken surface. To avoid further embarrassment (and really crap blog photos) we put the mould into the freezer of a couple of hours. This seemed to do the trick.
Step 3: Decorating Your Tree
This is where our poor choice of tree became apparent. Muji’s rigid tree design doesn’t offer much scope for playing with your baubles (matron!), or their position, at least. The result was that the lights hung in odd places because the spacing of the LED lights didn’t match up with the six-sided shape of the felt tree.
This wouldn’t be so bad, but the jelly baubles have quite a bit of weight to them, and will cause each fairy light to hang down a bit. If we’d had more freedom to place the lights where we wanted the tree would’ve looked a lot more presentable. As it was it looked more like a sex toy for daleks.
Speaking of smut, you have to be very, very careful when inserting the LED lights into your baubles. If you’re too rough the jelly will split. Be gentle if it’s your first time.
VERDICT
Tricky final assembly and user-unfriendly tree aside this was quite fun and easy to make.
We liked the festive orangeyness, but the clove flavour was far too strong. If making again we’d use only 3 cloves, and maybe add a bit of cinnamon stick. We think you could vary the recipe to make red mulled wine gums as well, or even whisky flavoured baubles, using the whisky-gum recipe found in Heston at Home. (Over to Andy to find out if that’s feasible)
We had these between 2 of us, after our early Heston recipe Christmas dinner. And after 2 dessert courses (trifle, then mince pies & potted stilton) we weren’t feeling up to scoffing 15 jelly sweets each. The would be great if you’ve got a crowd coming. But whatever you do don’t buy your mini tree from Muji.
Would you try making this, and what do you think of Heston’s edible decorations? Let us know in the comments section below.
Haaa, my goodness, edible christmas lights. No, I don’t think I’d ever make this, it’s one of those ideas I’d smile and exclaim at and then forget, so good on you for giving it a go!!!
Hey Kavey!
Thanks for reading as always. With all the updates we get on http://www.kaveyeats.com/ I’m flattered you find time for us 🙂
These were tons of fun to make, but much more suited to Andy G’s big party than an intimate dinner for two or four.
I’ve made these today for Christmas day. I may have made them too early, but they’re easy to do again Xmas eve if need be.
I’m very impressed at the flavour and texture of the baubles. I managed to get hold of some Citric Acid & Oil off Amazon, not sure if this made the difference but I actually used 6 cloves and thought it tasted lovely. I may just like cloves.
It’s a basic jelly mix and, as long as you’re not after Fat Duck worthy baubles you could mess around with it. We’re trying to work out if we can make a variety of colours, such as orange & lime to give a bit more of Christmas colours. I’m not a big dessert maker, but I’d have thought some lemon juice & green colouring would give the desired effect. I’ll look up some jelly recipes.
We’ll be serving this first. I know it makes little sense to have jelly first but we’ve got 12 round for dinner (including some kids circa 6y.o.) and I’m looking forward to the theatre of having this on the table as everyone is sitting down.
A variety of colours & flavours sounds brilliant, great for everyone to pick at. More convincing too.
How did you get on at unmoulding them?
What a nice idea, though being close to Muji probably helps.
Andy: if this is to be starter-ish why not make some sweet green /lime baubles, and some savoury red / tomato ones. Even Bloody Mary ones for the grown ups.
Thanks for reading.
There’s a link to Muji’s online shop up there somewhere, in case anyone wants to have a go at replicating this. This sort of idiocy involves a lot of online shopping. I shudder to think how much we’ve spent on vacuum bags trying to get the aerated layer right for the Black Forest Gateau recipe!
Bloody Mary or Lime baubles sound brilliant. I finally watched the Christmas episode of Fantastical Food on 4oD, the possibilities seem endless.
I did notice Heston’s baubles are bigger than my baubles 🙁
Good one! I like OldLag’s idea too. I get citric acid from a pharmacy by the way.
Gary, in future I am making you our first port of call for rare ingredients!
There’s a rumour Andy G might be doing the Edible Wrapper caramels, can’t wait to see how they turn out.
Awesome…..Im just laughing here thinking of the family getting the teeth zapped every time they take a bite….well done , really impressive one to make em all smile.
Which is more than i can say about the last series….Bloody awful…every programme.
Cheers and a very happy new year.
Alan
Hi
Did you use hemi-sphere mould? And if yes, how did you stick halves together to make a full round?
Hi Nish,
Our moulds were from Muji. They’re almost completely round. Once the balls were set we just popped them out whole, but they had slightly flat bottoms (the bit I hid by using it as the side to insert the light into).
It’s not super-easy to tell from the close-up photos but our baubles aren’t much bigger than Skittles.
Been phoning all the shops I can think of in Central London, can someone please please tell me….. Who sells fructose and citric acid powder in W1 or North London, two weeks now and not been able to source, the same applies to the muji mould as I don’t have time to wait until after Christmas for a delivery… Thanks
Hi Linda:
1. Fructose can be found at most of the supermarkets we go to. “Fruisana” brand at the vile Sainsburys is about £1.
2. We skipped the citric acid for the baubles. I think a decent (and preferably independent) phramacist may be able to help
3. We got our moulds from a VERY small Muji franchise inside Selfridges. It’s actually meant to be an ice cube mould. Are there any other similar kitchen shops that might have something that works?
Best of luck in your hunt and hope you get everything on time! We reckon using a little bit more gelatine than the recipe suggests would be a good idea to make the baubles more stable. Look forward to hearing how it turns out.
P.S. to all other readers. As you can see from the above comment, finding the right kit in a wasteland like Central London is clearly a challenge.
Without wishing to sound like we’re gloating, we should point out that we’ve never had such sourcing problems in Leigh.
I just want to point out that there is a difference between citric acid and “food grade” citric acid. I got a 5 lb bag off of Amazon for $14 (US).