Lychee Jelly Recipe with Champange

Lychees + champagne + konnyaku jelly = champagne lychee jellies! This decadent, delicious, vegan, Asian dessert is perfect for a summer party!

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• Why make this
• Ingredients
• How to serve
• Expert Tips
• Recipe FAQs
• Other dessert recipes
• Champagne lychee jelly recipe
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Lychees and champagne are a perfect flavor combination, in my opinion!

Note: For more canned lychee recipes, click the link or make some refreshing lychee tea. If you're looking for traditional Chinese lychee almond jelly or lychee coconut jelly, you're in the wrong place, but check back again soon.

Why make this

1. Lychee jellies are delicious and fun- perfect for pool parties!
2. It's a very simple dessert that you can make perfectly the first time, but sounds impressive
3. Only pantry ingredients used.
4. No fancy equipment (such as a food processor) needed

Note: For summer desserts with no sugar and flour, check out this link. Add a brown sugar tapioca pearl into the lychee, and you get lychee eyeball jellies that are a great no-bake Halloween treat! Or pair them with this cooling lychee juice!

Ingredients

The main ingredients of this lychee dessert are pretty much pantry staples:

1. lychees: if you can't get the fresh fruit, use a can of lychee as I did. Canned lychees are a versatile long-life ingredient, which can be used in many other recipes too.
2. champagne: to taste the flavor, you need minimum 20% champagne to 80% water. I usually make it with a 50% champagne- 50% water ratio but 100% champagne works too if you can bear the pinch! (If you have pink champagne, even better.) For those watching their budgets, go with sparkling wine which is cheaper but pretty much the same thing!
3. a gelling agent
4. Optional, white granulated sugar: Whether or not to add sugar would depend on whether your gelling agent comes sweetened. You can use white sugar or Chinese rock sugar (which tastes more mellow than regular sugar.) However, I don't recommend dark brown sugar as we are not looking for a caramel flavoured jelly! Do make sure the sugar is bone char free, or this lychee dessert won't be vegan.

Note: For sugar substitutes, as in this traditional Japanese jelly fruit salad recipe, click here.

What gelling agent?

There are several types:

• gelatine (not vegan)
• agar agar (made from red algae)
• konnyaku jelly.
  • I like the texture of konnyaku jelly best so that's what I used for my lychee jellies: the firm texture of the konnayku provides a nice contrast to the soft lychee fruit.
  • Do note that konnayku jelly is not suitable for young chiildren (and maybe old people) as there have been reports of kids choking.
• For non-vegans who want a jiggly chinese dessert: gelatin powder (or sheets).

Note: If you are not familiar with konnayku , I have a short FAQ section in my yuzu marmalade konnayku jelly post and 1 on agar agar here.

Lychee syrup

If you can get fresh lychee fruits, please use those in this simple recipe! Unfortunately, since fresh lychees are not available year round, I used canned ones to make these easy lychee konnyaku jellies.

Regarding the canned lychee syrup:

1. If you can, it's always best to use fresh lychee juice instead of the canned lychee syrup
2. If using the canned syrup, you may still need to add sugar (if your gelling agent has not been pre-mixed with sugar)- mine did!
   • This would vary from brand to brand, so taste before adding sugar. However, do use less sugar than you normally would to make jellies as the syrup is already sweet on its own. 
3. There isn't that much brine in 1 can of lychees, so you will either need to dilute with water, make fewer jellies or open more cans!
   1. Obviously the higher the proportion of lychee syrup to water used to make jellies, the more lychee fragrance these bite-sized desserts will have.
4. If you don't want to use the lychee brine, you can make your own lychee syrup by boiling the lychees with sugar and water.
5. Alternatively, you can just use plain water to make these lychee jellies but they won't be as fragrant.

How to serve

As you can see from the photo above, I made the lychee jellies in a variety of shapes:

1: jelly in lychee shell - the amount of champagne jelly in each lychee is quite insignificant, to be honest, but it does look good. If I was having a dinner party, I'd make a couple of these just for the visual effect! 

Place the lychee in the ice mold to help hold them stable whilst you pour the jelly mix in. Make sure the lychee opening is facing upwards (and not slanted) to make pouring the lychee jelly in easier. As the lychee cavity is tiny, use a ½t measuring spoon to scoop the jelly in- if you have a syringe, so much the better!

2: champagne jellies with a whole lychee in an ice mold (try to use molds that are at least 1.5x the size of the lychee- the ones in my photo were deemed too small and thus had "too little jelly to lychee" according to my testers.

3: lychee jellies with nata de coco in fancy flower-shaped molds (you can use any shape you want to make jellies- it doesn't have to be flower- shaped. I added the nata de coco for textural contrast but you can also use half lychee fruits and half other tropical fruits such as rambutans, lime, ginger etc.

Expert Tips

Tip #1: if setting the lychee mixture in molds, try to use silicone molds as their flexibility makes it so much easier to pop the jellies out!

Tip #2: if serving at a very fancy party, pour a bit of liquid lychee into individual champagne glasses (heat-proof) to set, add cut up tropical fruits (shredded dragon fruit, chopped up rambutan etc), aloe vera or nata de coco and maybe brush with some gold leaf

Tip #3: If using agar and you've poured in some excess water, don't panic. The lychee jelly should still set but it'll be a bit less firm. If you find that it really cannot set, simply heat up the mixture again, add a bit more agar agar powder and repeat the lychee jelly making steps in the recipe card.

Tip #4: A flavour pairing I think would be amazing but haven't had time to explore for this dessert is rose and lychee, especially if you use a pink coloring for the jelly!

Tip #5: if you want to make lychee jelly in various colors, separate the lychee jelly into equal portions. Mix a different colour into each portion. (e.g. add yellow colouring to 1 pot, pink to another etc)

Recipe FAQs

Other dessert recipes

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