How to Turn Fruit Juice and Chocolate Syrup into Squishy, Delicious Edible Spheres

Make a fancy molecular gastronomy garnish in your home kitchen with a technique that’s so simple, we published it in our latest cookbook for kids. Meet Edible Spheres (and get ready to impress your family and friends). 

To form these bouncy, shiny, flavorful spheres, you need just three ingredients: any flavorful, water-based liquid (think fruit juice, hot sauce, chocolate syrup, soy sauce, or coconut milk); unflavored gelatin; and, most importantly, a tall container of vegetable oil that you’ve refrigerated overnight. (Don’t worry, you’re not eating the oil—you use it to form the spheres and then you’ll rinse it off.)

You can find all the step-by-step details for making edible spheres in the video below, but here’s the gist: You’ll bloom the gelatin, whisk in the rest of your hot flavorful liquid, and pour the mixture into a squeeze bottle. Once it’s cooled to about room temperature, drip it into your tall container of cold oil, forming tiny little spheres. (This part can feel supermeditative!) Finally, drain your spheres and rinse them gently in cold water, and they’re ready to serve. 

We love serving fruit juice spheres in a yogurt parfait, sprinkling hot sauce spheres on avocado toast, and spooning chocolate syrup or coconut milk spheres over ice cream, but feel free to experiment with different combinations. (Just keep in mind: Gelatin mixtures become liquid above 50 degrees, so if you serve your spheres on something warm, they’ll start to melt pretty quickly.)

How does this technique turn liquid droplets into solid, round spheres? There are two star players on this spherification team: gelatin and cold oil. When the room-temperature gelatin mixture hits the cold oil, the drop in temperature almost instantly transforms the liquid droplet into a solid sphere. (Gelatin mixtures are liquid above 50 degrees and solid below that temperature.) And, as you might have heard, oil and water don’t mix. When the drop of gelatin mixture hits the oil, the oil pushes the water-based mixture into the smallest shape it can form—not loose blobs, not egg shapes, but perfect, round spheres!

Before you start spherifying, here are a few tips from the pros. 

• Don’t substitute other kinds of oil for the vegetable oil—vegetable oil stays liquid, even at refrigerator temperature, which is key for this technique. 
• If your flavorful liquid is thick, like chocolate syrup, or salty, like soy sauce, first mix equal parts of your liquid and water. Then, measure from that mixture to make your spheres. 
• Leftover spheres can be stored in an airtight container, covered with a layer of vegetable oil, for up to a week. 

Want more science-y recipes and delicious experiments that are fun for kids (and grown-ups)? Our latest release, The Complete Cookbook for Young Scientists, features more than 70 of them! Learn why browned food tastes so delicious (and make perfect pan-seared steaks), what makes whipped cream so fluffy, how Greek yogurt and regular yogurt differ, and much more. 

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