It won't go down as my most sophisticated dessert, certainly, but it got a few laughs. The pink rabbit quivered and lurched as it was plonked on to the dinner table, landing bum first, hanging over the edge of the plate rather drunkenly. OK, so I put a little bit of vodka in it (Delia's spiced cranberry and orange recipe was far too tame for a Saturday night). Yes, I'm talking fruit jelly.

Jelly has been having a revival of late - and not before time. It has been much maligned in recent years, thanks to those lurid-coloured, chemically flavoured blocks that we munched as kids, and the alcohol-fuelled jelly shots we knocked back in the Eighties.

It used to be so fashionable. Jelly was de rigueur in Victorian times, when British kitchens attracted the attention of top French chefs, who marvelled at our elaborate moulds and intricate layered jellies that wobbled provocatively on the table.

In fact, the history of jelly goes back even farther, to the medieval period, when savoury jellies featured in lavish banquets, flavoured with almonds and rosewater, coloured with spinach leaves, saffron and egg yolks, and even to the ancient Egyptians, who were the first to eat it.

Jelly has played a part in top restaurant kitchens in more recent times, too, with top chefs crafting savoury and sweet versions to add a textural accent and a clever hit of flavour to a dish, using ingredients from beetroot to quail. And it has been enjoying a retro moment in celebrity cookbooks as names from Delia to Nigella have attempted to bring jelly back to its rightful place as the finale for any dinner.

But its revival didn't really hit home until recently - when the music producer Mark Ronson ordered one as the centrepiece for his £30,000 birthday party (laced with absinthe, naturally). Yup, jelly is back and starring at a dinner party near you.

I had mistakenly thought that gelatine - the setting agent for most jellies - was made of boiled-up horses' hooves, but that's an urban myth. Gelatine is sourced from animals, sure, but it's the collagen they're after, and horses' hooves don't contain collagen (calves' feet, yes).

Gelatine is extracted from the bones, connective tissues and organs of cattle and horses, and sometimes fish. You can even make it yourself by boiling cartilaginous cuts of meat or bones (pigskin is good), though your supermarket-bought packet of powdered or leaf gelatine is obviously far more convenient. And veggies need not miss out - gelatine is also made from various vegetable sources, including seaweed (agar-agar), all readily available.

I went for the chef's choice - Supercook Select Fine Leaf Gelatine Platinum Grade, launched this year on supermarket shelves in response to consumer demand. Supercook reports that gelatine sales are up by 10 per cent this year.

“It's all about the wobble, you see,” grins Sam Bompass, aka the Jellymonger. Bompass launched Jellymongers in July 2007 with his business partner, Harry Parr - and they haven't looked back.

The 25-year-olds, who were at Eton together, threw a dinner party a couple of years ago serving jelly as dessert. “Everyone laughed - they thought it was brilliant, wobbling all over the place. It came after a series of complicated dishes, but this was the one most people talked about,” recalls Bompass.

They managed to catch the attention of Innocent Drinks, which signed up Jellymongers to create a centrepiece for its annual village fête. People started talking.

Parr, who was a keen home cook in the final year of an architecture degree, got the idea to combine his newly learnt techniques, from laser-cutting through to 3-D models, with the art of jelly-making. “We operate in a space between food and architecture,” he explains.

Cue a jelly modelled on St Paul's Cathedral. It was a triumph, and they've rolled out many copies since, including one for Mark Ronson's birthday. They're even working on a glow-in-the-dark version, after teaming up with Dr Andrea Sella at the Department of Chemistry, University College London, adding food-safe quinine, fluorescent when backlit with ultraviolet.

Any more jelly buildings on the drawing board? “We're working on a prototype of a Hawksmoor church for the Hawksmoor bar in Spitalfields, East London - it looks great, but it doesn't have the optimum mouthfeel yet,” he confides.

Hawksmoor's co-owner, Huw Gott, wants to serve jelly to larger groups, eaten after their cocktails and steaks. “I think a big, wobbly jelly is just what we need. We want something dramatic that looks good and tastes great, and is a bit quirky and interesting,” explains Gott.

What would Mrs Beeton make of it, I wonder? I counted 55 jelly recipes in her legendary 1861 tome Household Management, from cactus fruit to guava, rhubarb to Irish Moss. “By adding a little gold and silver leaf or a few drops of yellow, red or green vegetable colouring matter, considerable variety may be introduced at small cost,” she writes.

She probably would have loved it. Perhaps I should have consulted her before trying to turn out my rabbit, which was a bit ragged around the edges. “It is much better to dip the mould once into hot water than three or four times into lukewarm water,” she advises.

Talking of jelly moulds, food historian Ivan Day has a few corkers in his collection, from Renaissance obelisks to Victorian swans. “It wasn't until the 18th century that moulds really started to get elaborate - some are unbelievable,” enthuses Day, who runs period cookery courses from his Cumbrian farmhouse, including some that focus on jelly.

The next one is December 6-7 (it costs £280 for two days; www.historicfood.com), and the schedule includes a stab at the fabled Alexandra Cross jelly, made to celebrate the wedding of Edward, Prince of Wales and Princess Alexandra in 1863. It's one of the most complicated, and when sliced reveals the Brunswick star running through the centre like a stick of rock.

That mould is made of copper, but the earliest were made of wood, explains Day. “Sometimes they were made in the shape of birds, the jelly eased out with almond oil, then dusted with breadcrumbs and placed on the table as a bit of a joke. Jelly was both food and entertainment back in Victorian times.”

Bompass prefers to use a copper mould when he's making jelly - or thin plastic, if it is one of his own creations, which start at £300. What's the biggest jelly he has ever made? “Seven metres long - it was a major logistical effort to unmould it. We had to get an engineering company in to help us,” he confesses. Too big and you need a higher concentration of gelling agent which doesn't taste so good. He advises making jellies at home with under a litre of liquid.

Bompass usually makes lots of smaller jellies, then puts them all together for the final display (he makes a few hundred a week in his sister's kitchen). And don't feel you have to go out and buy expensive moulds - you can use Tupperware, or any child's plastic sandcastle, he suggests.

The weirdest jelly he has ever made? “I once made one with zebra meat with black and white stripes; and I've done an alligator, colouring it with parsley - it looked a bit evil,” chuckles Bompass.

Though Heston Blumenthal wins the prize for making the strangest jellies of them all. I'll never forget biting into his orange and beetroot jellies served towards the end of the meal at his three Michelin-starred Bray restaurant, the Fat Duck. “May I suggest that you begin with the orange,” said the waiter. Except it didn't taste of orange, it tasted of beetroot, and vice versa.

Then there are Blumenthal's savoury jellies, which take many forms - my favourite is the jelly of quail, which comes with a langoustine cream and parfait of foie gras. “Making a savoury jelly is one of the true tests of a chef,” he writes, in his recently published Big Fat Duck Cookbook. “That transparency gives an impression of simplicity, but in fact it requires great skill to master all the variables that go into the creation of a jelly that has clarity, complexity and texture; that has balance and depth of flavour but is also clean and refreshing.”

Hmm. Maybe I'll stick to fruit jellies - my rabbit was made simply from freshly squeezed fruit juice and crushed spices, but it tasted great, and was pretty healthy too - not a bad way to get kids to eat their five a day.

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