Mandarine Deams

I am trying to comprehend jelly shots as not just something for people who don't like booze can eat and get really drunk from.

I can certainly see their aesthetic appeal, when I see pictures like these. But I'm still not sure I get them.

I had a few mandarins quickly loosing their appeal and figured I had better juice them, that done I remembered Jelly Shot Test Kitchens candy corn shots and figured I could do something similar, but with only two layers.

I started with the opaque layer:

• 8 grams gelatin powder
• 33 ml water
• 33 ml condensed milk
• 16 ml Absolut Vanilla vodka
• 15 ml (clear) Bols cream de cacao

The gelatine I carefully dissolved in the water over slow heat stirring pretty much constantly. The three alcohols I mixed in a bowl and once the gelatin was completely dissolved I poured the warm liquid into the booze and poured a bottom layer into my molds. And put them into the fridge.
Barely twenty minutes later I could proceed with the orange layer:

• 8 grams gelatin powder
• 50 ml mandarin juice
• 50 ml Cointreau
• A dash of orange bitters

I dissolved the gelatin in the mandarin juice over slow heat and then poured it into the Cointreau with the dash of orange bitters added. By then the opaque layer was completely set and I could fill up the molds with this orange liquid.

Once I was ready to try my creations I used the rest of my mandarin juice in a modified Blood and Sand:

• 2 cl rye whiskey
• 1 cl sweet vermouth
• 1 cl cherry wine (a wonderful Danish product from Frederiksdal )
• 4 cl mandarin juice

Put all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake vigorously then strain into small glass or in my case a small glass bottle.
Since a single mandarin had showed itself to have eating qualities I turned that into a bar snack by wrapping thin strips of a good quality fried bacon around the sections.