Coffee Jelly is a delicious coffee-based snack or dessert made of coffee-flavored jelly cubes. It is chocka full of grass-fed gelatin to help our digestive tracks heal, give us some much needed protein and yet it is light and refreshing. It is a great way to add some gelatin to your diet or even to your kid diet.

Be sure to check out even more health benefits of gelatin below.

Ingredients

1 envelope unflavored gelatin (2½ teaspoons)

2 tablespoons boiling water

2 cups strong coffee

1 to 2 tablespoons stevia, or monk fruit (or your favorite no calorie sweetener)

Servings (adjustable): 4

Instructions

Dissolve the gelatin and water in a small cup.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the mixture along with the coffee and sweetener to a simmer. Simmer for 30 seconds to dissolve the sugar and thoroughly mix in the gelatin.

Pour into an 8-inch loaf pan and cool thoroughly, then refrigerate until firm.

Cut into cubes, toss in granulated sugar or substitutes (see note below).

Note:  Monk fruit, coconut sugar, date or maple sugar can be used as a 1:1 replacement for white granulated sugar called for in a recipe.

Gelatin squares can also be served solid or cubed in glasses, cups, stemmed glassware or small bowls. Pour over ¾ cup condensed milk – regular or oat/coconut condensed milk for dairy free.

My favorite way to serve it is in a glass with frozen whipped cream and chocolate sauce, although it’s also delicious with ice cream or regular whipped cream.

Top 5 Beauty Benefits Of Gelatin

1. Beautiful skin from the inside out

Taking gelatin internally can help (alongside good diet and exercise) to build strong foundations for fantastic skin, hair and nails.

Gelatin is a dietary source of collagen and eating or drinking collagen helps to increase the body’s own collagen production.

Increasing your collagen production helps to smooth out fine line facial lines and create firmer, plump skin.

It’s not just your face that can benefit from taking gelatin either.

Amazingly it can even help to prevent stretch marks as it helps with skin elasticity. Stretch marks occur when your body grows faster than your skin’s collagen can handle. Your skin is made of collagen and elastin proteins that can only stretch so far before they break. Once you exceed the limit that they can stretch, the proteins will break leaving behind stretch marks.

Why not try introducing a little gelatin into your morning smoothie? You won’t even notice that it’s there and it will be working hard from the second you drink it.

2. Get the “glow”

The ‘glow’, the way you look and feel on your very best day when everything falls into place, good hair, check, great skin, check, happy insides, check!

We’d all like to feel like that more often and although gelatin is at it’s most effective when taken internally it’s also great when it’s used topically.

Using gelatin as as a skin cream, hair mask, hair gel can seriously smooth and strengthen skin and hair.

If you want an intensive conditioning treatment that creates super shiny hair why not have some fun and make your own hair mask?

There’s a great one here that will leave your hair feeling strong and shiny, we know we’ve tried it! If you’ve got curly hair and suffer with the ‘frizz’ this is a great way of achieving those soft frizz free curls too.

3. Healthy glow begins in the gut

Gelatin is a gift to tired, stressed systems and can help to improve your digestion since it naturally binds to water and helps food to move easily through the digestive tract.

It also helps to heal the gut lining by boosting gastric acid secretion and restoring a healthy mucosal lining in the stomach.

Reducing inflammation in our bodies has become a major focus in health and wellbeing, with the thinking being that long term inflammation can be one of the triggers for chronic conditions.

Gelatin contains two anti-inflammatory amino acids which assist with reducing inflammation, ‘when your body is absorbing your food and using it effectively then inflammation in the gut is reduced’.

My Grandma always said that her chicken broth was magic when we were under the weather, it turns out that she was right. Bone broth isn’t just trendy at the moment, it’s been in ancestors medicine cupboard for long time.

4. Sleeping Beauty

How many times have you heard the phrase, ‘Get your beauty sleep’?

The truth is that we all know we look and feel better after getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night, as our bodies rest and recuperate.The reality is that strive as we might it’s not always possible to get to, and stay, asleep.

One of the amino acids in gelatin is glycine and research has shown that taking glycine just before bed can actually enhance sleep quality and efficacy (sleep time/in-bed time), daytime cognitive functions and also reduce daytime.

Glycine is recognized as an “inhibitory” neurotransmitter, which put simply means it acts similarly to some anti-anxiety or antidepressant medications, only without the unwanted complications and side effects.

5. Happy hormones

If you’re happy in the head it shows all over your face. Hormones are our circuit board of emotions, flicking the switch from happy to sad in mere moments, but did you know that hormonal changes affect our skin too?

In older women, lower levels of estrogen can contribute to the breakdown of collagen. Interestingly, just the opposite occurs in younger women.

If there is too much estrogen, collagen can also break down. Because of poor diet, stress, lack of exercise, and consumption of phytoestrogen foods like soy, many people these days are experiencing a condition called estrogen dominance.

The good news if you are now thinking of embracing the use of gelatin is that it has anti-estrogenic effects. This basically means that it can help offset the effects of excess estrogen in the body.

Estrogen dominance is something you’ll be happy to avoid as its causes those pesky monthly cramps, uncomfortable bloating, and fertility related hormone issues. Certain amino acids, such as glycine, which we find in gelatin, not only help lower hormones like norepinephrine, but also increase “happy hormones” like GABA.

High quality gelatin is also great for increasing your collagen production, as mentioned above, a boost we could all do with.

Gelatin is also 88% pure protein and almost half of the amino acids are glycine or proline, which are critical building blocks for healthy hair, skin and nails.

Along with the benefits discussed above glycine can also help regulate blood sugar levels and combat sugar cravings, so it could help with keeping your waistline in check too!

If you would like more delicious recipes made with gelatin, there is an entire book full of them as part of this recipe bundle:  Blended Bites