Almond pudding/jelly/Jell-O

Whatever it might be called in a cookbook or at a restaurant, it's delicious.  I came across this recipe while flipping through a dim sum cookbook; I got the impression that the cookbook as a whole was designed for people like me who know and enjoy dim sum but are slightly nervous about attempting it at home.  Since the recipe in the book only required one ingredient that we didn't already have, I figured it was worth a try.

Unfortunately, the finished product had no business calling itself "something delicious that you would want to consume".  When I took the dish out of the fridge it was still a liquid and nowhere near set, even after 18 hours.  Upon closer inspection, I discovered some watery milk (milky water?) lying atop a sickly-sweet almond-flavoured morass of still-grainy gelatin.  It wasn't even one of those culinary mishaps that still taste all right, like the Great Annapolis Pizza Fiasco of 2009.  This went into the sink immediately.

Our notes:

• Total time elapsed from measuring out the sugar and water to putting it in the fridge to set: 15 minutes, from 11:01 PM to 11:16 PM.  Not too bad, though see the point below about letting the gelatin soften.
• There was a very strong almond flavor, more than even I would want in this dish.  Perhaps 1 or 1½ teaspoons would be more appropriate rather than the 2 specified, though this may not have been an issue had the gelatin set as expected.
• The recipe only said to let the gelatin soften for 5 minutes; the box of gelatin (consulted long after the fact) called for 10 minutes. Might this have been part of the issue?
• Apparently, you can't just go by appearances on this one: on the stove the water-sugar-gelatin solution looked like just that, but as we would discover later, the gelatin had not, in fact, dissolved into the sugar water.
• Like the red beans and rice experiment, this recipe seemed like it was designed for beginners, calling for gelatin rather than the more traditional agar. Next time we'll try and get actual agar; we live right down the street from a fairly large Asian grocery store so I don't think this will be a problem.

It's very sad when a recipe doesn't turn out even after following the directions to the letter.  We'll try a different recipe for almond pudding next time.


Blonder, Ellen. (2002). Dim sum: The art of Chinese tea lunch. New York: Clarkson Potter.