Agar Jelly Fruit Cake Recipe เค้กวุ้นผลไม้ - Hot Thai Kitchen!

Sawasdee ka, welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. I am super excited about today's recipe because summer is coming and this is the perfect summer dessert. It'll be a showstopper to any party you take it to. I'm making Woon Pol Lamai. Woon is agar-agar jelly and if you're not familiar with it, it's basically like a vegetarian gelatin. And Pol Lamai means fruit, so I'm basically making a fruit cake filled with lots of yummy tropical fruits. And I know you guys always love my agar recipes, so you can add this one to the list. Let's get started. So this dessert has three layers. The one I'm making now is the main one that's clear with lots of fruit in it. So I've just got some cold water in the pot and I'm going to add my agar-agar powder. And this is important because the measurement that I'm giving you only applies to powder form, not flakes or any other form. Now, the one that I get comes in a little bag like this. This is a Thai brand. You can also look at Japanese grocery stores. They use agar-agar as well and they call it Kanten. You can also look at health food stores which also sell agar-agar as a vegan substitute for gelatin. Okay, online, lots of different places you can get it. I'm going to add this now to my cold water. Cold is the key because if you add it too hot, it will clump up. So I want to just stir it with a whisk. And now to add a little fruitiness, I am going to add some lychee juice. So this is the juice that comes from the canned lychee. So canned lychee, the fruit inside is actually really, really good. It's one of those fruits that can really well. And the juice actually has a lot of lychee flavor in it because lychee is such a juicy fruit that when they can it, that flavor really goes into the syrup. And a lot of Asian restaurants will make lychee tea and things like that using the juice from the liquid. So I like to add it in, add a little fruitiness, a little flavor. You want to bring it to a full boil and you want to stir it all the time because if you don't, it will settle at the bottom. All right, so it is boiling now and you want to make sure it boils for about one to two minutes just to make sure everything is completely dissolved. To check if it's completely dissolved, I like to use a metal spoon. You put some solution on your spoon, pour it off, and then look to see if you can see tiny little specks of the agar powder stuck to the spoon. And you want to keep it going until you can no longer see any dots. And just make sure they're actually specks and not air bubbles because, you know, sometimes it's an air bubble and you keep it there forever and it's like this never dissolves. I'm going to add some sugar and you can add as much or as little sugar as you want depending on how sweet you want it. And this is something great about agar jellies because the sugar won't really affect the end result. So if, you know, somebody's watching their sugar intake, you can really cut it down without compromising the texture. Let's put it in the mold. So I'm going to make this in a cake pan so when you unmold it, it actually looks like a big beautiful cake. You want to work with this while it's hot, okay, because it sets at room temperature so you really don't have that much time. So now, bubbles. Now the fruit I'm using today, you can use whatever you want. Make sure you cut them small. I just want to stick with the tropical theme because after all, this is Thai food. So I've got some mango here that I'm going to scatter and I do scatter strategically just to make sure it's evenly distributed. A little OCD thing of mine. I hate it when things are not evenly distributed. And I like to put a little bit of the liquid first before I put the fruit in because if I put the fruit in first, sometimes it sticks so tightly to the mold. And then when you pour in the liquid, it actually won't go under the fruit. So when you unmold it, you have exposed fruit. So this way, you sort of make sure that the top is nice and smooth. Alright, and the blueberries are going to float. Some of them are going to float. Do not worry about that, okay? So I'm going to let that just set so it's hard enough that we can pour the second layer on without them mixing. So now what I'm creating is a white layer that's really important because in order for these fruits to stand out, you kind of want to give it a white background. Now could you stop here and just put it on a white plate? Sure. But this is so much prettier. So the white layer is going to be coconut milk, which goes so well with all the flavors of those tropical fruits. So I've got here some coconut milk. Gotta get rid of the extra water. Some coconut milk going in. And this is the last of the really good coconut milk that I have that I brought back all the way from Thailand. Okay, and I'm going to thin this out a little bit with some water because I don't want it to be too rich. The agar agar powder going in. Okay, I've got that all stirred up. I'm going to add some pandan leaf, just a little bit of pandan leaf to give it some nice floral aroma, a little touch of Thai into this recipe. Again, I'm going to bring it to a full boil. Okay, so the agar agar has completely dissolved. I'm doing my regular check for little specks, I'm good. Now I'm going to turn it off now. Add some sugar, a little pinch of salt. Coconut milk really does so much better when there's a tiny little salt in it, right? Like the other layers, we've got acid to balance the sweet. This one, we have no acid, so we need a little salt. That's ready to be poured right on top of this one. But I got to check first that it's firm enough. And it is! Woohoo! Okay, so now that's going to set. Last layer. So the last layer, the real reason why I made it is because I don't want the bottom layer to be white because chances are the plate's going to be white. So for more contrast, I wanted a colored layer as the bottom layer. But turns out that it's also really delicious. So I am using mango juice here to match the flavor and to match the color of the fruit and to contrast with the plate. It's so perfect. Now the mango juice that I am using is actually this one. It's a smoothie, so it's rather thick. So I want to thin it out a little bit by adding some water. And you can use whatever kind of juice that you like. It doesn't have to be this color. It can be beet juice for all I care. Some agar agar in here. Stir it up. Same, same. So comes time for you to make this recipe. I would actually suggest watching my recipe footnote video, which I'll post a link right up here and also in the description. There are a couple things to keep in mind that could make or break this recipe. I didn't want to include here just because it'll be too long, but definitely check that out if you're going to make it. Alright, now that's ready to go. Better check that it's... Okay, it's still really soft, so I have to be really, really careful with this. So I'm actually going to pour it over another spoon because I'll tell you, I've done it before where I rushed this part and completely broke the bottom layer, so you don't want to do that. Whoo! Just perfect. Alright, now that's just got to chill in the fridge until it's cold, and we'll be right back. Yay! It's cold, it's chilled, it's solid, and you know what? That's half your battle. Now the other half, and quite honestly the most difficult part, is getting this out of the gosh darn pan. It's always the hardest thing. I have figured out some sort of a trick that hopefully will work, and I'll show you. First of all, you need something thin to run along the edge, and be very careful that you don't accidentally cut into the cake, because guess what? I've done that. If you've got a silicone cake pan or mold, I think that'll be easier because you can kind of squeeze it and jiggle it out, but when it's hard like this, it's really quite a challenge. Now, the big problem is, it's like there's no air inside, so it's sucked into the pan, and that's the biggest challenge. You can run this around all you want, but if you don't give it any air, it'll just get stuck to the pan. So, what I like to do, is I push this a little bit, and then I stick a toothpick in, see how tall the toothpick is, and I'm going to break it off because I need it to not be taller than the pan, and then I stick the toothpick in, and just leave it in there, and it will create a little gap for air to go in, so it'll come out a little bit easier. Sure, you will get a little mark right here, but it doesn't matter. You won't see it. And I'm going to do that in three different spots, just to help it along a little bit. Anyway, if anyone has a better idea, let me know of how to get this thing out. Now, of course, if you just want it into small pieces, you just go ahead and cut and dig one out, and all your problem will be solved, but I want it in one round big piece, and this is why we're going through all the trouble. There we go. Ta-da! Oh, see, I dug out the edge. That's what you don't want to do. I wasn't being super careful. So I do have a side that doesn't look great, but that's okay, because I have all these other sides that look great. Look at that. Look how cool that looks. So now, I like to, whoa, serve this like a cake. You can, I'm going to put some fruit around it, but I want to cut into it so you can see the inside, how cool the inside looks. Woo-hoo! Look at this beauty. Ooh, beautiful. Look at that. Isn't that a dessert to impress or what? And of course, you can be really creative with the kinds of fruit that you're putting in. You can have color themes. You can do red as your theme. Mm. Oh, it's so good. So refreshing. Oh, I want to get one with the blueberry in it. This is dangerously good. The fruit contrasts with just that little bit of coconut, and it's just, it's creamy, it's fruity, it's light. The texture of agar-agar is almost a little crunchy, in a good way. You know what I mean when you taste it. And it's just so pretty. I can't get over how cool this looks. So when you make it, definitely send me a photo. I'd love to see what kind of fruit you use, what kind of layers you do. The recipe, as always, will be on hotthaikitchen.com. And send me the photos on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And if you haven't subscribed to the show, definitely do right here so you never miss an episode. And I will see you next time for your next delicious Thai meal.