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Clear champagne glass filled with orange/brown colored jelly and topped with beige coconut custard, with a cookie resting on the cup's rim.

Lychee Jelly Dessert with Coconut Custard

This layered dessert has lychee and jasmine flavored jelly, topped with creamy coconut custard and crispy cookies!
Course Dessert
Cuisine Asian
Keyword coconut milk, fruit, gelatin, jasmine tea, lychee, nut-free, tea
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Resting Time 8 hours
Total Time 8 hours 30 minutes
Servings 3 people
Calories 357 kcal

Ingredients

Lychee Jasmine Jelly

  • 2 tablespoons jasmine tea leaves
  • ½ cup hot water
  • ½ cup cold water
  • 0.25 oz powdered gelatin or ½ packet
  • 4 tablespoons canned lychee syrup or 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 1 pinch kosher salt
  • ¼ cup chopped lychee fresh or canned

Coconut Custard

  • 1 cup coconut milk
  • 2 large egg yolks
  • teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 ½ tablespoons granulated sugar

Assembly

  • Crispy cookies

Instructions

Lychee Jasmine Jelly

  1. Combine the tea and hot water in a medium heat-proof bowl, then let steep for 15 minutes. Remove the tea leaves.
  2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, pour in the cold water. Sprinkle the gelatin evenly on top of the water in one layer, then let sit for 5 minutes.
  3. If your tea is feeling a little cool, re-heat it in the microwave until hot, then mix into the gelatin mixture. Mix in the syrup or sugar, and the salt.
  4. Divide the lychee between 3 serving glasses, then pour in the gelatin mixture. Don’t worry if it looks like the lychee is sinking to the bottom.
  5. Cover the glasses and refrigerate until set, which shouldn’t take more than a few hours. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Coconut Custard

  1. In a small pot over medium heat, heat up the coconut milk until steaming. Try to keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t start boiling.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, salt and sugar until combined.
  3. Once the milk is hot, turn off the heat. Ladle one scoop at a time into the eggs, whisking constantly to ensure that the eggs do not scramble. Repeat this process until about a third of the milk has been added to the eggs.
  4. Add the eggs and milk mixture to the rest of the milk in the pot, and place the pot back on medium-low heat. Cook, stirring and scraping the custard frequently if not constantly, until the custard coats the back of a nonstick spatula and doesn’t drip off the spatula easily. This will get poured over the jelly, so it doesn’t have to be super thick.
  5. Pour the custard into a bowl, cover and refrigerate until cold, preferably overnight.

Assembly

  1. When ready to serve, pour the coconut custard over the jelly. Either crumble cookies on top of the custard, or serve the cookies alongside the dessert.

Recipe Notes

If you don’t want to use jasmine tea, you can omit and use plain water instead of tea, or you can substitute for another kind of tea.

If you don’t want to serve this with cookies, you can top with toasted almonds, roasted sesame seeds, or crushed black sesame candy.