It always seems to surprise me the amount of recycling that piles up in our house on a weekly basis. Empty toilet rolls, cereal boxes, milk cartons, egg cartons..the list goes on. We keep a separate recycling bin in the kitchen, hidden away behind the door as it’s normally overflowing. I always set aside anything from the recycling bin that I think we could use for making something else. Sometimes it might be a craft idea for the kids that I save for a rainy day or other times it might just be an idea I have for something I could re-use around the house.

I really want to try and post more regularly on my blog so this is the beginning of my first ever mini series called ‘Get Creative With Your Re-cycle Bin’ hopefully this will help me to post one of these a week as I always work better to a schedule or deadline.

This week it’s all about Jelly.

We eat a lot of eggs in our house. One of my favourite staple foods. I’ve started buying the large crates of 20 eggs now as we just fly through them on a weekly basis.

I saw the empty plastic egg container and thought how cute would it be to make mini jelly portions for the kids, the perfect size for them.

Here’s what you need:

1 Sachet of Hartleys Jelly Powder -we used Raspberry flavour but they are all yummy

1/2 Pint Of Boiling Water

1/2 Pint of Cold Water

Spoon

Jug or Bowl

Some Hundreds and Thousands or other cake decorations-we used…

1 x Empty Plastic Egg Container

Ok so here goes..

I’ve made this a few times now and I found it a lot easier to get the jelly out after if I pre lined the tray with a little bit of oil at the beginning. I just used a tiny bit of vegetable oil and a basting brush. This is not necessary but it definitely helps.

Next shake a little bit of Dr Oetker shimmer sugar or hundreds and thousands into each portion. This just adds a little extra surprise for the kids but you can also make it without this.

Mix together one sachet of Hartleys Jelly with 1/2 pint of boiling water and stir well. I made the jelly in a large plastic jug as It’s easy then to pour it directly into the egg tray. Then mix 1/2 pint of cold water into the jelly mixture. Once thoroughly mixed slowly pour your jelly mixture into the tray. I let the kids take turns pouring in the jelly.Fill to the top and place in the fridge to set for a few hours. Before you start this it’s a good idea to clear a shelf of the fridge first. When we went to put our jelly in the fridge it was jam was packed so it took ages to move stuff around before I could put the jelly in and the kids were very worried about their jelly.

When I originally thought of this idea of making the mini jellies, I was thinking how cute it would be to make mini jelly castles with hundreds and thousands on top of the jelly and I had this gorgeous Pinterest worthy finished picture in my head. The jelly didn’t quite turn out as great looking as I thought (so much so I didn’t even take a finished picture-sorry!!) so I’m a little disappointed with the look of the finished product but the kids honestly didn’t mind and they absolutely loved making and eating it. To be honest the portion sizes are the best thing about this, it’s really handy to have in the fridge as a quick after dinner treat .

I’m going to try making this one more time and maybe putting the jelly in the freezer this time so I’ll do an update on that to see if that works any better. I’m still living in our Summer holiday home/mobile home so I don’t have a freezer here but once I get home i’ll try it again and let you know how that goes!