Sparkling Wine Gelee

I have this terrible affliction where I can never do anything the easy way. When cooking with wine came up as a proposed theme, I thought, a-ha! Time to make wine gelee! How hard could it be, right?

Truthfully, I don't think it's hard, but for some reason I was not completely successful. I personally think the recipe calls for too much sugar and maybe not enough gelatin, but you can be the judge.

First, I mixed raspberries with a 1/4 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice.

In another bowl, I combined 1/2 cup of Prosecco and added 3 1/2 teaspoons of unflavored gelatin. The directions said to "sprinkle," and I don't know if I could accurately call what I did "sprinkling." I'm thinking this might be where the trouble began. I let it sit for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, I brought 1 cup of sparkling wine, 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons of sugar to a boil and then stirred it until it dissolved.

The directions then said to pour the boiled mixture into a pitcher and add the remaining sparkling wine, the raspberries and remaining tablespoon of lemon juice. Frankly, I'm not totally sure it needed that much more wine, because my gelee had a very hard time hardening to anything close to a wobble.

I then poured the fancy Jello into wide glasses and a mini bundt pan and refrigerated overnight.

And it was totally still wet and mushy the next morning...not even close to a jiggler. The situation was only worse when I brought the pan to Wine Club...the little bit of hardening had melted back into Jello liquid.

Luckily, Erica had a stroke of genius and put the pan in the freezer, creating a frozen gelee that was quite tasty and kept its form. Ta-da! An edible dessert.

So, it was a disaster that worked out, but I'm open to suggestions on where it might have gone wrong.