Christmas Easy: Spiced Cranberry and Orange Jellies with Frosted Cranberries

I always like to serve a jelly at Christmas time because when there is a lot of rich food around it is so nice to have something cool, light and refreshing at the end of a meal. This one is incredibly simple, but don't be tempted to jazz it up – we've already tried that and found this simple version infinitely better. If you prefer, you can make the jelly in a 1¼ pint (725 ml) capacity jelly mould rather than wine glasses.

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Method

First, using a potato peeler, pare off the outer zest of the oranges then squeeze them. Place the zest and juice in a saucepan with the spices, cranberry juice and sugar and bring everything just up to boiling point - this will take 4-5 minutes.Next place the cubes of jelly in a measuring jug. Strain the cranberry juice mixture through a sieve into a jug and stir until the cubes of jelly have dissolved.

Leave the mixture to cool a little before pouring it into glasses; now cover and leave them until completely cold. Then put them in the fridge to set overnight. For the frosted cranberries, all you need to do is dip each berry first in the beaten egg white and then roll in caster sugar to give them a generous coating. They will be fine left like this overnight, ready to decorate the jellies on Christmas Eve.

Note: this recipe contains raw egg.