Coffee Jelly Recipe: 4 Uses for Coffee Jelly

Coffee jelly is a popular summertime jelly dessert flavored with coffee, sweetened with sugar, and set with either gelatin or agar-agar (called kanten in Japanese), depending on the locale. You can find coffee jelly in convenience stores and restaurants in Japan, but cookbooks in England first featured the recipe as early as the 1800s. The food continues to be popular in many Asian countries, not just Japan.

Makers of the Japanese dessert use coffee products ranging from brewed coffee to ground coffee beans to instant coffee powder. Black coffee with no added milk produces the best results, but a sweetened black coffee is okay to use for an extra sweet dessert.

Making coffee jellies is a quick process, but working with gelling agents isn’t always straightforward. Here are three tips for making coffee jelly:

1. 1. Brew strong coffee. Use strong coffee, or even espresso, for the coffee jelly to ensure the coffee flavor comes through no matter the final dish. Otherwise, the other ingredients in the jelly have the potential to dilute the coffee flavor. You can use hot coffee, iced coffee, or instant coffee powder as long as you brew it to be strong.
2. 2. Sweeten with sweetened condensed milk. Instead of using white granulated sugar, as most recipes call for, use sweetened condensed milk. Not only does this add a different sweetness, but it also changes the color of the coffee jellies to more of a milky iced coffee or Vietnamese cold brew color. The jellies end up creamier in texture as well.
3. 3. Use gelatin powder. Especially for beginners, gelatin powder can be easier to work with than gelatin sheets. The small granules disperse and dissolve better in water, whereas gelatin sheets don’t dissolve until later in a cooking process. The end product will be cloudier than if you had used gelatin sheets, but the jellies are dark in color, so it isn’t an issue.

Japanese coffee jelly has many uses. In addition to eating the jelly cubes on their own, you can enjoy this food in other ways, including:

1. 1. As an ice cream topping: Whether you’re enjoying vanilla ice cream, coffee ice cream, or another flavor of the frozen treat, coffee jellies can be a fun and texturally different topping. They’ll firm up once the jellies hit the frozen ice cream and soften again as the ice cream melts. For a different twist on homemade ice cream, gently mix the coffee jellies right into the custard before you freeze the ice cream.
2. 2. In milk tea: Use coffee jellies in milk tea instead of tapioca pearls (also called boba). The effect is similar since tapioca pearls plump up and become gel-like when you cook them and soak them in a brown sugar syrup. The benefit of using coffee jellies is the coffee flavor pairing with the milky tea flavor, especially a spiced tea like a chai.
3. 3. In iced coffee: This is a similar concept to using coffee ice cubes in iced coffee or an iced latte so as to not dilute the flavor of the coffee as the ice melts. However, coffee jellies won’t melt in an iced beverage, so their addition not only amps up the coffee flavor but also provides a snack of coffee jellies at the end of your beverage. The jellies don’t serve the same purpose as ice, so for the best results, use coffee ice cubes as well as the jelly cubes.
4. 4. In desserts: Many dessert recipes can benefit from the addition of coffee jellies. Coffee jellies mix well into smooth and creamy batters, like that of cheesecake and traditional cake batter. Additionally, you can mix the jellies into toppings like frosting or whipped cream for pockets of coffee flavor. This works well in desserts like tiramisu.

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