Inspired by The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. (斉木楠雄のΨ難)
Makes five 55g coffee jellies
or three 100g coffee jellies.

Coffee Jelly:
1.5 teaspoons (2.5 g) gelatin
1 cup + 2 tablespoons quality coffee¹You don’t have to use fancy coffee here, any coffee will do.
1 tablespoon (15 g) sugar²The coffee I used was light and fruity so it did not need a lot of sugar in my opinion (maybe not even any at all). Add sugar, tasting as you go, until you reach your desired sweetness. Remember if you are adding whipped cream that you will also get additional sweetness there.
pinch of salt

Whipped Topping:
¼ cup heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

1. Brew coffee.
2. As soon as the coffee is ready, while hot, put 2 tablespoons in a small bowl. Add in gelatin, stir until fully dissolved and allow to bloom for 5 minutes.
3. In a separate bowl combine 1 cup of coffee with sugar and pinch of salt, stirring until both dissolve.
4. After gelatin has bloomed, stir again as it may have hardened up slightly, then stir into coffee and sugar mixture until fully combined.
5. Pour liquid into containers and place in refrigerator to chill for at least 2 hours. To attempt to match the anime exactly I used five individual ½ pint mason jars with 51 grams of liquid added a piece.
6. When ready to serve, make the whipping cream by whipping heavy whipping cream until half whipped then add in powdered sugar and whip until soft peaks form. Put whipped cream onto coffee jelly and serve.

If you are going for the look in the anime:

1. Hold jar in warm water, enough to loosen the jelly, about 30 seconds. Wiggle back and forth a bit to break the jelly from the side then flip the jar over onto serving plate (ideally on that is a pedestal). Jelly should come clean from the jar. If it does not, repeat heating in water again.
2. Place whipped cream in piping bag and pipe ten dollops of whipped cream around the coffee jelly. If you are not serving immediately place in fridge for up to 24 hours.

Rambles:

I watch a lot of anime, I don’t mind admitting that. But, lately life has been hectic around here and I find myself wanting to relax in the evening to funny and mindless rather than intense or emotional (like Violet Evergarden – highly recommend by the way, but I think I cried every episode). Luckily I recently discovered the The Disastrous Life of Saiki K anime. This anime is perfect to relax to because every “episode” is actually many smaller episodes together that are more like vignettes (“episode 100” happens in episode 20 on Netflix). You don’t have to commit to a whole episode nor do you get sucked into watching two or three because of the story. Plus it is pretty amusing.

Right away in episode one we are introduced to Kusuo Saiki’s (Saiki Kusuo, 斉木 楠雄) love of coffee jelly. This is his favorite snack and he continually searches for and consumes it through out the anime. The constant discussion of coffee jelly almost every evening for the past few weeks has made me want to eat it myself and I set out to make some.

This recipe was inspired by the Top Quality (最高級) Coffee Jelly (コーヒーゼリー) Saiki ends up purchasing from the grocery store in Episode 6. In that episode he notes that this coffee jelly is 55 grams total in size and costs 2,950 yen. With this information in hand I set out to recreate it.

Now $26ish dollars for 55 grams of coffee jelly is pretty expensive. If we assume that the price is a three times mark up that still puts the ingredients for this at $8.66 a serving. Coffee is the majority of the weight of coffee jelly, and one cup of liquid is about 230 grams, that would mean that you could make five servings from one 8 ounce cup of coffee equaling $43.30 of coffee in this finest coffee jelly.

That is pretty insane. The most expensive coffee I can purchase right now at my local coffee place (which has fancy coffee and was named Micro Roaster of the Year for 2019 by Roast Magazine) is $325 for 100g of unground beans. That is about 9 cups of coffee, coming in at $36.11 a cup. This is still $7.19 cheaper than the coffee in the Top Quality Coffee Jelly. And that is a super rare, limited release coffee with only 12 total bags available. Yeah ok…no…

Instead I went with what we are currently drinking, the Rwanda Gatare Natural, which we got at $15.00 for 12 ounces of beans. This is about $0.50 per cup of coffee and puts us at double the price (assuming three times mark up) of the 120g for 138 yen mid range coffee jelly he originally was going to purchase.

So turns out this recipe is for double the price (and quality???) of his normal coffee jelly. Oh well, at least it was a fun thought experiment and justifies his need to protect that jelly as he walked around with it.

I found a great blog post about making stable whipped cream. I decided to go with the powdered sugar method because I wanted a fast, slightly sweet whipped cream that held it shape for only about an hour. I did leave one jelly with whipped cream on it in the fridge and it still looked and tasted good, but a little hard, 48 hours later.

Now I really do wonder what a 2950 yen coffee jelly would taste like and if I could even appreciate its delicate, subtle coffee flavors…certainly not in only 55 grams. That is my one complaint I have with making this to match the anime, 55 grams of coffee jelly is not enough (unless it is a pallet cleanser)! I highly recommend making three 100 gram portions instead.

To do this measure out about 88 grams into each container and top with about 20 grams of whipped cream. This isn’t quite the 120 gram midrange priced coffee jelly in the anime but it will be close!

Another side note, the jars were still not thin enough to get the height the jelly has in the anime but there is no way, unless Saiki has rather small hands, that the jelly he is holding there is 55 grams. This is what you get when you try to replicate the animated world in reality. Either way, this jelly is delicious!