Nigella's 'Slut red raspberries in chardonnay jelly'. Veganised.

Slut red raspberries in chardonnay jelly. Just the name of the dessert was enough for me to want to make it. I've also never made a Nigella Lawson recipe before. And it seemed a good way to use up the cheap bottles of $4 wine I seem to get given every year at around this time.

Nigella's original recipe can be found here. The recipe in the link is Nigella's take on a recipe she was sent. This is a vegetarian version of Nigella's version. Given the agar makes the jelly a little cloudier than Nigella describes in her recipe, the raspberries don't take on the same 'stained glass lucent red', but it does still make a pretty, but I suppose slightly less slutty looking dessert. So here is the recipe:

Slightly promiscuous red raspberries in chardonnay agar jelly.

1 x 750 ml bottle of chardonnay. Other white wine would probably work too. Red wine would just be weird...
5 grams of agar powder.
150 grams of caster sugar (sorry Nigella, 250 grams just sounds too sweet to me...)
1 vanilla pod, split open length ways
2 punnets of raspberries.

(Note - if you want to reduce the alcohol content of your jelly, boil the wine and let it cool again before adding the agar)

• Decant the wine into a large bowl and soak the raspberries in the wine for 30 minutes.
• Strain the wine into a saucepan and add the agar powder and vanilla pod. Stir the powder in and leave to soak for 15 minutes.
• Heat the wine slowly, stirring constantly to ensure the agar mixes in and no lumpy bits form.
• Add the sugar and dissolve into the warm wine. Divide the raspberries between 6 serving bowls. Make sure your serving bowls will be ok with heat.
• Strain the wine mix to remove any vanilla pod chunks, and pour over the top of the serving bowls while it is still warm.
• Chill in the fridge to set. My jelly set in under an hour

This is an awesome adult version of jelly, and was really good served with some coconut ice cream we had left in the freezer.

Needs more raspberries :(

This photo doesn't really do the jelly justice, it had a wonderful golden colour and the raspberries were a beautiful glowing red.

The jelly had just enough agar to set. This was actually my third attempt at making this, before I got the amount of agar right. The first couple of attempts had too much agar and were just way too solid, as you can see in the example below.

Waaaaaay too much agar!!!!

The above example was what happened when I followed the agar to liquid guide on the back of the agar pack. I found it was just too much and had to cut back. Lucky for me I had several bottles of cheap wine to play with so it wasn't a total waste and I did get it right eventually. I also made a version of the jelly for our designated driver guests and under 18s, substituting apple juice for the wine.

The jelly tasted wonderful. It would be even better with a better bottle of wine. I probably should have boiled the alcohol out of the jelly in my initial test versions... after lots of taste tests of failed jelly I'm feeling a little woozy...