What’s better than a coffee you can drink? Coffee you can eat! Japanese Coffee Jelly is a light dessert made in advance and ready to impress. Only 5 ingredients!
Why We Love This
Coffee jelly is so easy to whip up and the perfect light, refreshing dessert (or anytime snack for coffee lovers!).
You can easily adjust the sweetness and strength of coffee flavour to get it just how you like it.
It’s so much cheaper to make coffee flavoured jelly at home than buying pre-made coffee jelly packs at the supermarket.
Related: Agar Agar Jelly with Coconut / Blancmange Pudding
What is Japanese Coffee Jelly?
Coffee jelly (known as コーヒーゼリー or kohii zerii in Japan) is a popular Japanese dessert that originated in the 60s. Although, the recipe itself actually originated in Boston, America long before it started to spread throughout Japan.
It’s now often sold at cafes and restaurants as a dessert or sweet treat on its own, with cream, or as part of a parfait with matcha ice cream and red bean. You can also buy pre-made packs at supermarkets or convenience stores like 7-Eleven.
There were so many times we’d buy this for dessert while living in Osaka, so it’s great to be able so easily recreate back home in Australia!
What You’ll Need
- Coffee – Freeze dried instant coffee works best, although you can use fresh espresso if you prefer. Use decaf for guilt-free coffee jelly in the evenings.
- Gelatin – Look for plain, natural or unflavoured gelatin. Sub with agar agar powder (also known as kanten powder) for a vegan friendly version. If you have gelatin sheets instead of powdered gelatin, just compare the weight and use as much as you need.
- Sugar – We use brown sugar to add a sweet caramelised flavour. You can use any sugar you like, if using regular sugar, this will be sweeter so start with 1/2 to 3/4 of the amount brown sugar.
How to make Coffee Jelly:
- Add your instant coffee, gelatin powder, brown sugar and boiling water into a large jug. Whisk everything until the sugar has dissolved, and make sure there’s no gelatin stuck to the bottom!
- Pour in the cold water and whisk again.
- Pour in the coffee jelly into either dessert cups or glass dish.
- Optional: Using your whisk, try to break any large bubbles around the edges to give the jelly a nice smooth finish once set.
- Place into the fridge for at least 3 hours to set. (It will still be warm, but the cold water brings the temperature down enough to pop it straight in the fridge.)
- If using a dish, cut jelly into cubes and scoop out into serving dishes.
- When serving, add any garnishes (such as cream, mint, chocolate shavings, coffee beans, maraschino cherries or condensed milk) straight on top of the jelly and eat!
Wandercook’s Tips
- Coffee – If you want to use real coffee, you can either prepare 2-4 shots of coffee or 3 pods if using a Nespresso (or similar) depending on how strong you want the coffee flavour. Just make sure the total liquid for the jelly is equal to the 1 cup of boiling water. For example, a double espresso is around 70 ml / 2.4 oz, so you’ll need to add another 180ml / 6 fl oz of boiling water to your mix.
- Jelly Cubes – Don’t worry if you don’t get perfect cube shapes when slicing the jelly, any rough edges will still look gorgeous when mixed through with cream, condensed milk or melted ice cream.
- Storage – Coffee jelly will last for 1-2 days in the fridge. Keep it in an airtight container to maintain freshness. This will keep the jelly texture soft and avoid it going hard or chewy.
- Careful If Adding Fruit – Don’t add fruits like pineapple or kiwi, as they will stop the jelly from hardening. It’s fine to add these on top to serve AFTER the jelly is set.
FAQs
There are a few things that may have caused this:
– Time: You may not have allowed enough time for the gelatin to properly dissolve. Make sure to mix it well in the boiling water and let it fully dissolve with the sugar before adding the cold water.
– Gelatin Type: Some gelatin types react differently to boiling water. If in doubt, check the packet’s instructions. Some may need to be dissolved in cold water first, or added in at a certain temperature.
– Not Enough Gelatin: If you find you it semi-sets but is still quite soft, trying using an extra teaspoon of gelatin on your next round and that should help to give you a really firm set.
– Still in doubt? Swap it out: If gelatin still isn’t working for you, swap it for agar agar (kanten powder).
We usually have it with unsweetened cream (thickened cream or pouring cream are totally fine). Try it with a scoop of ice cream (vanilla or matcha ice cream are both so delicious!), red bean, chocolate shavings, coffee beans or sweetened condensed milk for extra sweetness.
– Drinks: Pop them into milkshakes, iced coffees, South East Asian teas – such as iced teh tarik or teh c peng three layer tea or add them to the bottom of your boba tea!
– Desserts: Add them to Vietnamese three layer desserts with (or instead of) pandan jelly. We’d also love to have a go at a coffee trifle or jelly slice.
Variations
- Sweetness – If you don’t have sugar in your coffee, you can leave this out. The sweetness level is around “coffee with 1 sugar”, so you can increase the sugar if you have a sweet tooth! You can also switch things around and sweeten the cream instead of the sugar.
- Individual Servings – Set the jelly in small individual moulds, crystal glasses or stemmed cognac glasses for a beautiful visual effect.
- No Gelatin or Agar Agar? – It’s possible to make this into a pudding style dessert with cornstarch instead, similar to our blancmange vanilla pudding. Just add in 2 tbsp of the instant coffee to that recipe, and it’ll be like a latte in a pudding!
Make these jelly and pudding desserts next:
★ Did you make this recipe? Please leave a comment and a star rating below!
Ingredients
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1 cup cold water
- ⅓ cup brown sugar 50 g for extra caramel notes. Sub reg white sugar, demarara or raw sugar.
- 3 tsp gelatin powder 9 g / 0.31 oz
- 2 tbsp instant coffee 8 g / 0.28 oz, see Coffee under Notes for subs
Garnish ideas
Instructions
- Add your instant coffee, gelatin powder, brown sugar and boiling water into a large jug. Whisk everything until the sugar has dissolved, and make sure there's no gelatin stuck to the bottom!⅓ cup brown sugar, 3 tsp gelatin powder, 2 tbsp instant coffee, 1 cup boiling water
- Pour in the cold water and whisk again.1 cup cold water
- Pour in the coffee jelly into either dessert cups or glass dish.
- Optional: Using your whisk, try to break any large bubbles around the edges to give the jelly a nice smooth finish once set.
- Place into the fridge for at least 3 hours to set. (It will still be warm, but the cold water brings the temperature down enough to pop it straight in the fridge.)
- If using a dish, cut jelly into cubes and scoop out into serving dishes.
- When serving, add any optional garnishes (such as cream, mint, chocolate shavings, coffee beans, maraschino cherries or condensed milk) straight on top of the jelly and eat!thickened cream / heavy cream, chocolate shavings, coffee beans, fresh mint leaves, cocoa powder, maraschino or glacé cherries
Video
Recipe Notes
- Coffee – If you want to use real coffee, you can either prepare 2-4 shots of coffee or 3 pods if using a Nespresso (or similar) depending on how strong you want the coffee flavour. Just make sure the total liquid for the jelly is equal to the 2 cups of boiling water. For example, a double espresso is around 70 ml / 2.4 oz, so you’ll need to add another 430 ml / 14 fl oz of boiling water to your mix.
- Jelly Cubes – Don’t worry if you don’t get perfect cube shapes when slicing the jelly, any rough edges will still look gorgeous when mixed through with cream, condensed milk or melted ice cream.
- Storage – Coffee jelly will last for 1-2 days in the fridge. Keep it in an airtight container to maintain freshness. This will keep the jelly texture soft and avoid it going hard or chewy.
- Careful If Adding Fruit – Don’t add fruits like pineapple or kiwi, as they will stop the jelly from hardening. It’s fine to add these on top to serve AFTER the jelly is set.
- Sweetness – If you don’t have sugar in your coffee, you can leave this out. The sweetness level is around “coffee with 1 sugar”, so you can increase the sugar if you have a sweet tooth! You can also switch things around and sweeten the cream instead of the sugar.
- Individual Servings – Set the jelly in small individual moulds, crystal glasses or stemmed cognac glasses for a beautiful visual effect.
- No Gelatin or Agar Agar? – It’s possible to make this into a pudding style dessert with cornstarch instead, similar to our blancmange vanilla pudding. Just add in 2 tbsp of the instant coffee to that recipe, and it’ll be like a latte in a pudding!
Nutrition
4 Comments
Dwight
02/09/2023 at 1:10 amThanks for the recipe! I know this might be an odd TMI but I was watching a comedic Japanese animation show called “The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.” and the main character’s favorite dessert is coffee jello and I just had to try it.
Wandercooks
02/09/2023 at 7:50 amOh very cool Dwight! Maybe we’ll have to watch an ep or two of the anime, it sounds good. Also – what did you think of the coffee jelly? 😀
Gina
21/09/2022 at 3:41 amHello! Im now officially obsessed with your website! Your recipes are fantastic and empowering. I have a question about this coffee jelly before i make it.. The recipe states that you use 1 cup of boiling water, but, in the nespresso pod tip, it says 2 cups of boiling water. Can you clarify? I want to use my own espresso. Do I make enough to add to total 1 cup of boiling water with this recipe? Thank you very much:)
Wandercooks
22/09/2022 at 12:25 pmAh that’s so awesome to hear! Ah sorry, that’s meant to be 1 cup of boiling water, and the usual 1 cup of cold water. So with the espresso, do 2-4 shots (depending on how strong you want it) and pour that into a measuring cup, then fill it up to the 1 cup mark with boiling water and you should be good to go!