Not The Colliewobbles, The Jelly Wobbles

On the fourth day of Christmas my penguin gave to me…

Four wobbling jellies,

Three French badgers,

Two turtle bars,

And a pelican in a pear tree

Christmas means parties. And parties, at some point, mean jelly. Even if it’s in the dim and distant past, almost everybody has associations with jelly at parties. Whether of an Enid-Blyton-esque variety, or the sort more often consumed from a shot glass, jelly just has celebratory qualities...

... it can look festive...

Savoury goat cheese panna cotta with cranberry jelly from The Kitchn

... it can make you festive...

Whiskey sour jelly shot from 12 Bottle Bar

... it can do both (oh wow!)...

Gingerbread martini jelly shots from Jelly Shot Test Kitchen (I can't believe how amazing these look! I also can't believe there's really a blog about jelly shots... now that's specialisation. And fun...)

... or it can just sit there, wobbling invitingly, making you feel like a kid all over again. Which is a good way to be at Christmas time...

Lemon and honey jelly bundt from Delicious Delicious Delicious

Or it could be as beautiful as these ones (and yep, that's definitely more than four. Rumour has it I go overboard at Christmas, though, so it was bound to happen on here, too!)...

Watermelon jellies from Not Quite Nigella

Sour cream and summer berry jelly from Russian Season

But there’s one place in particular that jelly doesn’t belong*, and that is in trifle. I might be pursued with dessert forks by the ravening hordes of disagreement for saying so, but while trifle may well be followed or preceded by jelly, it should be entirely jelly-less itself. Too many textures. Too much fuss. All sorts of other reasons. But, most importantly, because that’s not how the trifle-eating cat’s mum makes it. Which is the culinary equivalent of “because I say so”. Annoying, irrefutable, and so, so true!

* In addition to being bounced across a lazy susan at yum cha, but that ought to go without saying...