JELLO CAKE - Rau câu khuôn (Recipe) | Helen's Recipes

Hi everyone, it's Helen here. Today I will be making Rao Cau, a Vietnamese Jell-O cake made from Ega Ega coconut milk and different flavorings. Ega Ega is made from seaweed and it is very popularly used in Vietnamese cooking to make jelly instead of gelatin. It's a great alternative for vegetarians who don't want to use any more gelatin in their desserts. This Jell-O cake used to be very popular in the 90s and I used to make this quite often with my mom when I was a kid. Nowadays it could be considered as old-fashioned but I still think that it's really pretty. So today I will make it again to recall the childhood memory. Let's begin. Helen's Recipes You can buy Ega Ega powder in a package like this at Asian stores. Each package is around 25g. If you follow the package instructions, the jelly is gonna be very soft. Normally I use a lot less water than suggested. You also need plastic molds like this. You can find them at Vietnamese markets or on eBay. Instead of food colorings, I use juice to flavor and color my jelly. For example, tropical fruit juice for yellow, red beet juice for the color red. The color is very natural and beautiful. For green color, I use green tea powder or matcha or you can also use pandan extract. We're gonna mix 1 tbsp of Ega Ega powder with 4 tbsp of water. Depending on how many colors you want to make, prepare these mixtures in separate bowls. Stir well and set aside for about 15 minutes. I'm gonna start with red color first. In a small saucepan, add 1 cup of coconut milk, 1 cup red beet juice and the Ega Ega mixture. Depending on your taste and the sweetness of the juice, you might want to add about 3-4 tbsp of sugar. Stir well to help the sugar dissolve and bring to a boil while constantly stirring. This is my general Ega Ega jelly recipe. When it boils, immediately lower the heat and remove the foam. You should have planned which part of the mold will get which color before actually starting the cooking process. Normally the most hollow part of the mold gets filled first. Carefully pour the liquid into the part of the mold you want to fill. If you accidentally pour into the wrong block, it's still okay. Just wait a while until it's set. Then you can use a toothpick or a q-tip to remove the excess part. Pour the remaining liquid into a large bowl, then place it in a tray filled with hot water. We're gonna use this to pour on top of the jelly mold later. This is the recipe for the green color. Use it to fill the green leaves. Repeat similarly with other colors and flavors. This time I use grape juice. For some parts of the mold that are too small to get in with a spoon, I use a straw to hold the liquid and then drop it into the small holes. This requires a lot of time and patience, so hopefully the result is gonna worth it. When you finish filling all the hollow parts, it should look like this. It's very crucial that you wait for the previous layer to partially set before you pour in the new layer. Use a q-tip to clean all the excess and pour a thin layer of coconut jelly liquid to set as a background. Wait for the surface to set before you pour in the new layer. I can't stress enough how important time management is in making this jello cake. You have to wait long enough for the previous layer to set, but not too long because otherwise the two layers are going to be separated when you unmold. You want the layers to stick to each other but not mix together. I pour the remaining red liquid on top of the matcha layer and let the cake chill in the fridge for 5 hours until completely set. Look, this is what happens when you didn't wait long enough. The coconut jelly broke through the yellow jelly and it just spoiled the cake. This fruit tray looks nice, but let's see. The next challenging task is now to unmold. Let the jello mold sit in a tray of hot water to loosen it out a little bit. Then run a paring knife along the edges. Then unmold it onto a cake stand or a plate. Ta-da! It's so pretty! I love how the flower basket appears in 3D. It's too cute to eat. It's a perfect dessert and a lot less calories than normal birthday cake in my opinion. Anyway, let me show you how the inside looks like. The layers show up very nicely. It's slightly sweet and has a mild coconut taste. And also the flavors of the fruit juices are so tasty. And you know what else is tasty? These amazing dishes prepared by some of you with my recipes. You are really better cooks than I am. Thank you for sharing with me your photos. I think my original dish didn't look this good. If you like my jello cake, don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already to get notified every time I upload a new video. Thank you for watching. Bye bye!