It's like iced coffee in Jello form. Made with agar agar, not gelatin, so it's vegetarian. #cookingathome 

Coffee and Condensed Milk Jelly

I recently had coffee jelly (coffee flavoured jello) at a Japanese restaurant and wanted to make it at home. It's easy enough to make with gelatin but then I wouldn't be able to share with my vegetarian friends. I also didn't want to buy gelatin since I have no use for it, so I decided to try agar agar powder (aka kanten). To make it extra challenging, I also made it a layered jelly.

Agar agar is a bit tricky to work with: it first needs to be soaked in cold water, then boiled in order to dissolve. It also gels somewhere between 32°C and 43°C so everything you mix it with needs to be warm, preferably hot. At least if you make a mistake, you can cook it down and try again, which is what I had to do.

On my first try, I had difficulty getting the agar agar powder to dissolve properly. I ended up boiling away more water than I should have. Then I added too much agar agar to one layer and not enough to the other, resulting in a really firm bottom layer and a top layer that set only half the time. Additionally, I waited too long in between pouring the first and second layers because the second layer wouldn't mix right. The bottom layer was completely set by the time I poured a cooling second layer on top so they wouldn't stick together.

The next day, I dumped everything in a saucepan and boiled it down with more agar agar and milk to lighten the colour, and kept it hot on the stove. I made a new mixture for the bottom layer in another saucepan and poured it into the mould. I let the other mixture cool down while waiting for the bottom layer to set. Both mixtures were still too hot when I started pouring the top layer; my first cube became a cloudy mix instead of two distinct layers. After a minute, I tried again with more success. Into the fridge it went and three hours later, out came a refreshing jelly dessert.

I combined two recipes to make this:
This one to mix the flavours - https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/168480-coffee-and-milk-agar-jello
This one for help on the layers - http://runawayrice.com/desserts/coffee-and-cream-agar-jelly-thach-ca-phe/

This helpful page explained to me what went wrong the first time - http://dukanrecipesbymariamartinez.blogspot.ca/2013/04/how-to-use-Agar-powder-Dukan-diet.html
And this page does a good job of explaining agar agar and its properties - http://www.moleculargastronomynetwork.com/5-additives/Agar-agar.html