Are you looking for a last minute Christmas gift? These pineapple fruit jellies are just the thing, they’re easy to make, top 14 free, naturally vegan and very delicious!
These fruit jellies are a traditional French sweet called ‘Pate de Fruits’ (fruit paste) – firmly set jelly sweets, rolled in caster sugar for the fruit pastille look. These are so much better than any commercial fruity sweet, they’re made with real fruit juice and sugar and set with pectin, giving you an concentrated, intense fruity flavour as well as a lovely yielding jelly texture. This also makes them naturally vegan as you don’t use gelatine like many homemade sweets.
You can use any fruit juice for these delightful little jelly sweets but pineapple is actually a really great choice – it’s sweet, yet light and refreshing and the perfect sweet treat to end a heavy Christmas meal. When you nibble ona couple of these you can really see the point of a traditional French ‘petits four’ after a meal – it’s sweet so hits the ‘I need something sweet’ spot, but also light and refreshing.
They also make a fantastic and very thoughtful Christmas gift, pop into a pretty glass jar and decorate with a ribbon and you have a gift that looks elegant yet homemade and will definitely go down a treat.
It’s most effectively to simply cut the jellies into squares, but i like using mini cookie cutters for extra cuteness.
Pineapple Jelly Sweets – Pate de Fruits
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Line a baking tin with parchment
- Pour the juices into a deep saucepan.
- Stir the pectin powder into half of the sugar. Sprinkle over the juice and stir, heating gently until the sugar has dissolved.
- Add the rest of the sugar, the syrup and oil. Let the sugar dissolve. Then bring to a rolling boil.
- You want the temperature to reach 108℃. This will take 10-15 minutes and you will notice the bubbles changing as the mixture heats. Be sure to scrape down the sides whilst the mixture is bubbling.
- As soon as it reached 108℃, take the pan off the heat and pour into the lined tin. Tap the tin on the work surface to get rid of some of the bubbles.
- Leave to cool, then cover with baking parchment. Once fully cold and set, cut into pretty shapes. Squares or triangles are the most efficient but I like using mini cookie cutters to stamp out little shapes.
- Roll each shape in caster sugar and then store in an airtight container until ready to eat.
