ooking has never been my forte. Back then during secondary school, my Home Econs teacher had always given me bad remarks about the food I made, and that was right after I had followed her exact instructions to prepare it.

One of the most memorable incident was her commenting that the Laksa I’d cooked tasted like Mee Siam – I knew I wasn’t cut out to cook since then.

But I still got hope lah, from time to time, I do like to make Konnyaku jelly, which is a no-brainer. And on an impulse, I decided to make Jelly Hearts, which I’d ate on a few occasions and fell in love with it ever since.

This is a photo of the final product shot with my iPhone!

It is not 100% perfect, but I’m very amazed at the result of my virgin attempt in “baking”! “Baking” in inverted commas because, to say it is baking is a tad off – No oven is used during the whole process. BUT STILL!!! It looks like something I would pay to buy off the shelves of a pastry shop!

I goggled for its recipe and decided to use the one from this cooking blog, http://watchmebake.blogspot.com. The blogger/baker is only 18 years old and she is quite an eye-candy herself!

Without further ado, here’s the “baking” process!

The ingredients I used:

Biscuit base:
310g Digestive Biscuits
140g Melted Butter

Cheesecake filling:
250g Cream Cheese
10g (1tbsp) Gelatine Powder
50g Sugar
½ cup hot water
½ tsp vanilla essence
One punnet of strawberries

Jelly topping:
1 box of jelly
1 cup of boiling hot water
1 cup of cold water

First up, the digestives were put in a ziplock bag and crushed. I being super kiasu, put in all the pieces at once and had a really hard time crushing them evenly! Lesson learnt: Crush a few pieces at a time – AKA, slow and steady wins the race.

Some of the jelly hearts photos I saw online had the biscuit base layer very crumbly with big and small pieces throughout. But I was worried that I would have a hard time cutting if the base were to break easily, so I decided to crush the digestive biscuits evenly!

Next, the butter was melted over low heat and mixed together with the biscuit crumbs. I felt the amount of butter in the recipe wasn’t enough, so I used the entire block instead of only ¾ of it. Well, turns out, the biscuit layer tasted a tad too sweet for my liking!

The mixture was then pressed firmly onto the base of the container and left to chill for about 30 minutes. I think it is fine to either chill outside or in the fridge, as long as the layer has harden for the next step.

While waiting for the biscuit layer to harden, I beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla essence until smooth and creamy.

The recipe says use an electric mixer, but I don’t have that, so I used a whisk instead. Tiring and time-consuming, but I’d say it’s a good workout for the forearm!

The gelatine powder was dissolved in boiling water and blended into the smooth cream cheese. The cream cheese mixture was then poured on top of the biscuit base.

I left it to chilled outside while proceeding with the cutting of strawberries.

I think it is important not to use strawberries that are too big, as the size of final individual cake pieces is dependent on the size of the heart-shaped strawberry slices. Cakes like these should be in small, exquisite bite size!

The strawberries were layered on the cream cheese mixture after it has harden a little, because I was worried the strawberries would sink into the cheese and disappear! LOL

Here comes the long waiting process as the cream cheese has to be set, or mostly harden before the next layer could be added on. It takes about three to four hours, but I kept going back every now and then to stick my finger in it to check if it had any progress!

So when the cream cheese was about okay, I started to prepare the jelly layer.

The “correct” colour to use for these jelly hearts is actually red! Which is either strawberry or raspberry flavoured. No, I didn’t had a bimbotic moment – It’s just that the red ones were all sold out! Yellow/lemon-flavoured one was the best I could get!

If I remember correctly, one of the recipe blogs mentioned that the agar agar jelly should NOT be used for this. I’m using the Tortally brand as shown in the photo, but my friend, Adam (he’s a very good baker/cook!), says Konnyaku jelly works fine too.

The jelly crystals were dissolved in boiling water, and further added with cold water after the crystals dissolved completely.

I’d say what came next was the most agonizingly difficult process. The jelly solution could not just be anyhow poured over! I had to slowly pour it over the strawberries to let it flow to the entire container, to prevent from destroying the cheese.

Even with my carefulness, the cheese layer in one of the containers had little bits that flowed out and dissolved into the jelly solution. This cause that batch of jelly to be slightly less transparent as the other one!

Anyhoo, the last step was to leave everything in the fridge and wait for everything to set!

TA-DA! My horribly sliced Jelly Hearts Strawberry Cheesecake! Have you spotted the murky ones already?!

Nonetheless, I felt super accomplished looking at the final product out of my impromptu decision!

Brought them to the mini potluck party held at my Thai class and they were very well received! I thought I’d earned some new found respect from the classmates judging by reaction when I told them I made these jelly hearts! Haha!

Check out this email that I’d received from one of my classmates!

HAHAHA! My “hearts” captured the ladies’ hearts! Awww!!!