Basil Infused Lemonade Jelly

It's hotter than the blazes here and I am still pregnant. I only have 9 days until the due date, but the baby doesn't seem to be in a hurry. Possibly this little one doesn't realize how uncomfortable it is for me to sleep? Regardless, I thought I deserved a nice, cool treat and found this recipe for Lemonade Jelly with Basil. I thought it sounded interesting, but more than that - cold.

I halved the recipe for a few reasons, one of which was that I didn't want to buy that many lemons and the other is that I didn't have too much basil in the planter on the balcony and I didn't want to use it all in one go.

Start by combining sugar, water and freshly-squeezed lemon juice.

Put it to boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.

Tear up the basil and pour the liquid over it, then let it steep.

Put some orange juice in a pan (I recently read a different article about making jellies that said to use a tad bit of orange juice to give lemon flavored jellies a nice, lemony color without changing the flavor - lo and behold, that is exactly what the recipe called for!) and sprinkle with gelatin. Turn on the heat to melt the gelatin, then whisk in the strained lemon/basil mixture.

Then pour it into little containers. I used flower-shaped ones that I was hoping I would be able to unmold from and have cute little lemon jelly flowers.

The next step was to make up some whipped cream. I just used cream and some powdered sugar - no recipe, just add some sugar until it tastes good, then whip it up!

The end result was delicious; like seriously good. The jelly didn't get hard enough to unmold. It was quite similar to Japanese-style jellies - something that I really do love. As in the very first photo, I piped on a bit of the whipped cream and added a tiny basil leaf.

For K's I asked him if he wanted some whipped cream and he turned it down. He loves yellow anything and so I think he was just really excited about the yellow jelly. One bite in...

and huge smiles abound! After about three bites, however, he said it was "spicy." I kept telling him it was sour, but he wasn't having it - it was spicy. I told him that if he put some whipped cream on it, it would be nice and sweet. He took one bite and then said that my mom and I could have the rest of his. Lucky us!!