I generally do a grocery shop once every two weeks or so. Some women like to shop for clothes, or shoes  – I shop for groceries. I really enjoy it and I can spend a good hour wandering the aisles with my trolley (yes TROLLEY!) deciding whether we’re going to be healthy or naughty. Healthy usually wins. As an extra challenge, I always aim to bring home at least one item of food that we haven’t tried before.

The most recent “mysterious” item was… Junket.

What is Junket, you might ask? According to Wikipedia, Junket is a milk-based dessert made with sweetened milk and rennet, the digestive enzyme which curdles milk. Sounds delicious, right? Err… right?

I remember having Junket as a child once or twice – I believe a friend of my Mum’s brought it around and I remember it being delicious. I think it was frozen. I don’t know, it was a long time ago. I figured what’s the harm in buying some and giving it another go? Maybe Phill and I will love it. You don’t know unless you try!

Junket comes in tablet form. You pop open two tablets, drop them in a glass and mix with two tablespoons of cold water. The tablets start to dissolve the instant the water hits them and it turns into a cloudy liquid.

You add the dissolved tablets to 500mLs of lukewarm milk, sweetened with a drop of vanilla extract. This is the hard part – the milk can’t be too hot or too cold or it won’t set properly. It’s got to be perfect. Another essential part of the recipe is that you can only stir in the dissolved tablets for a few seconds, then you have to stop stiring and pour the liquid straight into a dessert bowl. You have to stop stirring because it doesn’t take long for it to start to set and you don’t want it to curdle.

So I poured it into a dessert bowl…

… and realised I hadn’t added sugar! The particular recipe I was using was to make Junket custard and a tablespoon of sugar was required to be added to the milk while it was heating. Damn! I glanced in the bowl and decided it wouldn’t hurt to just add the sugar to the dessert now. I’d quickly stir it. What could go wrong?

Uh… this?

Dammit! The instant I stuck a spoon in it, it completely curdled into a chunky, watery mess. Apparently the packet wasn’t lying when it said you only have a very limited time to stir and transfer it to a bowl once you’ve added the dissolved tablets – it was literally seconds! This was obviously ruined, so I tipped it out and, determined, started again.

This time around, I added the sugar to the milk and, once it had dissolved, I added the tablet water. I transferred the liquid to the freshly washed bowl and, well, I stared at it for a while, intrigued. After a few seconds I gently wiggled the bowl and observed how the surface of the Junket had already set into a jelly-like state.

I left the Junket out for 10 minutes to set, then transferred it to the fridge, where it remained all day until I was ready to serve it for dessert. Uh, which didn’t go so well. I guess it hadn’t totally set because when I put the spoon in it, it was a lot more liquidy and less stable than I remembered from childhood. I served it anyway and … it was as expected. It tasted like liquidy milk with a texture like tofu.

Oh well. Maybe I’ll get the tablets out in a month or so and try again, but until then I guess I will classify this as a Junket FAIL. Has anyone tried Junket before? Had any success?