The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #26: Creamy Freeze

One of the beautiful things about Jell-O is that you can pretty much dress it up with anything you might have on hand, which makes it a thrifty little dessert choice. I had previously bought some lemon Jell-O that I had wanted to use for a fancy Jell-O salad recipe I found out about, but then I realized I didn't want to spend the money on all the different fruits and other fixings that went into it, so in I dove to The Joys of Jell-O to find something nifty that I could make with lemon Jell-O and no money. Enter the Creamy Freeze.

This fairly innovative little recipe uses the binding powers of gelatin and whatever Dream Whip is made of to simulate ice cream by folding the two together, freezing partially, and then whipping more air into the already fluffy mixture to make it light and scoopable once totally frozen. This ends up being easier said than done, though. For one, I have never met anyone who has freezing trays, so I was using a metal mixing bowl and the aluminum pot of a rice cooker to freeze my creamy mixture--maybe that affected the rate of freezing. Either way, it took much longer for the mixture to get even slightly frozen than what the recipe suggests, and I consider my freezer colder than most. I still followed the recipe's guideline about waiting until 1/2" was frozen and everything, but I'm not convinced it turned out exactly as it should have.

The result was less reminiscent of ice cream in texture and more reminiscent of a creamy, finely shredded shaved ice. Now, don't get me wrong: creamy, finely shredded shaved ice is a supremely refreshing dessert, particularly in lemon. It took on a dainty shade of creamy yellow and was just sweet enough to be indulgent without being too rich. Plus, it did manage to be readily scoopable. But it wasn't like ice cream.

Ultimately I can still recommend this recipe as an easy, budget-friendly, solid choice, though it did take a long time to prepare by Jell-O standards. However, if I were to make it again, I would invest in a couple of freezer trays to make sure the surface area-to-volume ratio is sufficient for proper freezing. Plus, there are several other recipes in TJOJ that call for the use of a freezer tray. Apart from that, I would always recommend real whipped cream over Dream Whip, but in this instance I really didn't mind the Dream Whip much because it serves the same purpose and doesn't detract from anything except the cost. However, when I was preparing the Dream Whip, I added real lemon extract instead of vanilla extract (because I only have imitation vanilla at the moment--sad, I know), which I think improved its flavor dramatically. I think even if I were using a different Jell-O flavor, I would still use lemon extract instead of vanilla, unless you have real vanilla.

By the by, any Jell-O flavor would probably be good or at least decent in this dish. Strawberry and orange would probably be especially tasty, or you could use lime to make a Key Lime ice cream treat. Another word of advice: it's best to eat this whole recipe, which makes a large batch, within a couple of days. Prolonged freezing and the temperature fluctuations caused by a freezer's defrost cycle cause this dessert to harden until it eventually becomes a solid block, which is no fun.

One last note: if you look at the example photo from the cookbook, you see that the Jell-O and Dream Whip are marbled in the freezer tray. However, if you read the instructions, you are supposed to whip all of that together until well blended but not melted during the freezing process, meaning that there's no way you can both follow the directions and end up with a recipe looking anything like the photo. Thanks, General Foods.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #24: Cherry Cola Mold

Okay, so it's been quite a while since I've posted a Jell-O recipe. Mostly that's due to having bought a house and otherwise staying very busy, but I also just haven't made that many Jell-O recipes. And, sadly, I didn't get pictures of the few I did make, but I'm still going to jot down my thoughts on each one and post the recipes.

The other thing I have started doing differently is making these recipes out of order. Instead of doing them as the book presents them (which would leave me stranded on "savory Jell-O dish" island for quite a while without a break), I've started going in a more-or-less random order based on my husband's recommendations and/or what I have on hand at the moment. Hopefully this will be a little more entertaining to follow along with, as even in the dessert sections, there are lots of consecutive Bavarian and Crown Jewel recipes, so hopefully switching it up will help us all avoid burning out on such repetition.

The first recipe I made was the Cherry Cola Mold. This was chosen by my husband because, frankly, cola and mayonnaise don't seem like the snuggliest of bedfellows. I made this recipe exactly as written, which is easy and straightforward (like most Jell-O recipes), except that I omitted the nuts. Maybe there's a gelatin recipe I would like better with nuts, but up to this point I haven't found it. I also found it very odd that this recipe calls for both cherry and strawberry gelatin. Wouldn't it be more cherry-y with two packages of cherry Jell-O?

As far as the finished product goes, the gelatin takes on a dusty rose color due to the cherry syrup, cola, and dairy ingredients, and it's smooth apart from the chunky ingredients.

The flavor...well, it's okay. It certainly tastes like cherry, with a tanginess provided by the pineapples and mayonnaise. The cola flavor almost entirely gets lost in the mix, while the cream cheese and mayo just make the whole thing so fatty it's almost too rich. Overall, it's merely alright, though I am impressed that you can add mayo, cream cheese, and cola to Jell-O and end up with a dish where none of those ingredients are distinguishable.

If I were General Foods and had the idea for a cherry cola mold, though, I think I could have done better, and maybe someday I will try this and report back on how it works out:

-Take the capacity of your mold, subtract half a cup, then divide by two.

-Take the quantity you came up with in the first step, and bring that much of your favorite cola to a boil--bonus points if it's cherry flavored.

-Dissolve 6 ounces of cherry Jell-O into the boiling cola.

-Take the same amount you calculated again of cold cola and add it to the gelatin mixture.

-Pour gelatin mixture into the mold and let cool until soft-set (or, as official Jell-O parlance would have it, very thick), then stir in half a cup of maraschino cherries, optionally adding a splash of the cherry syrup.

-Chill until firm, then unmold.

-Optional: leave out any maraschino syrup, continue thickening the gelatin until set but not firm, then add a thin layer of the syrup for a colorful layered effect.

While that dish might not be as pretty or Jell-O salad-y, I think it would be more successful at meeting the goal of "Cherry Cola Mold." It would taste like cherries and cola instead of cherries and pineapple. As written, though, this recipe is passable taste-wise, just very confusing. I would not make it again.

Next up: a few recipes I did a while ago, then back to the regularly scheduled "I make one recipe then post about it, with pictures of what it actually looks like" routine.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #160: Quick Tomato Mold

I'm trying to give all the kooky Jell-O recipes in this odyssey a fair shake, but sometimes it just doesn't shake out. The Quick Tomato Mold is another recipe I made while on a camera and writing hiatus due to being too busy, but I remember it clear as day.

 

Since Salad Jell-O flavors no longer exist, I used unflavored gelatin as the base for this "salad" and added some Italian herbs to the mix to mimic the Italian salad flavor (in this case parsley, oregano, and a little thyme), but otherwise made it as written. I was sort of excited to make this recipe since I knew that tomato aspics were popular dishes for a while both in the American South and in England, plus I had never really had tomato juice and wanted to use the leftover juice to try a Bloody Mary.

Unfortunately, none of that turned out how I wanted it to. Instead of letting the gelatin set up in a can, which just seems like a cheap-looking way to do it, I divided it up into silicone baking cups, and it had a nice red color and set up very firmly. However, it had the unmistakeable taste of pizza sauce. It really just tasted like hard pizza sauce, perhaps pizza sauce that had been left open in the refrigerator for far too long. The gelatin was so strongly flavored that I started gagging upon eating it and ended up throwing the vast majority of it out after struggling through one cup.

Now, to be fair, maybe this dish would turn out a little differently with some celery juice and celery salt or vegetable stock (to represent the other salad Jell-O flavors) instead of Italian herbs, but I somehow doubt it. It primarily tastes of the tomato juice, and I think tomato juice just isn't for me, especially not in a solid form. But I couldn't finish the Bloody Mary, either. I think you just have to really enjoy the flavor of tomato juice to be able to stomach eating it like solid food.

Another caveat to my dislike of this recipe is that I used a new kind of unflavored gelatin for it, and I believe its lower quality caused the recipe to turn out grittier than it should have. However, I don't think that's what ruined the experience for me.

Regardless, I would overall rate this recipe as very bad for being completely unappealing in every regard except the color, which is firetruck red as advertised.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #7: Quick Fruit Dessert

In the reference section of all mid-century Jell-O cookbooks, there is a method described to accelerate the setting of gelatin using ice. I have always thought that the claim that this speed-set method could completely harden gelatin in one hour was a little far-fetched, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works like a charm.

To make this simple Jell-O recipe, I just added a package of frozen raspberries to a normal mixture of hot water and raspberry gelatin, and, as claimed, the gelatin was fully set after an hour in the fridge.

As far as taste and appearance go, there's really nothing to say about this "recipe". It tastes like Jell-O with fruit, alrighty, which I guess is a good thing considering that that's what it's going for, but there's nothing more to it than that. In all, I can definitely recommend this recipe for anyone needing to get Jell-O made quick.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #10: Spiced Fruit Cups

Another recipe I made that I failed to get pictures of the end result was Spiced Fruit Cups, which is a fairly good idea. It's essentially just mixed fruit folded into cinnamon-spiked gelatin. Now, General Foods suggests that any fruit flavor can be used, but that didn't sit right with me. Do you really think raspberry and cinnamon would play nice together? Or lemon and cinnamon?

Me either, so I bought a package of a Jell-O flavor that hadn't been invented at the time this recipe was written--peach. Peaches and cinnamon go great together, so that's what I got. Otherwise I made it as written.

The end result was fine, except that the peach flavor seems more than a little artificial, and the cinnamon somehow highlights that fact. The cinnamon also seemed to have a hard time blending into the gelatin, so you encounter clumps of it every so often. But the color was certainly reminiscent of spiced peaches, and the fruit went surprisingly well with the rest of it.

However, if I were to make this recipe again, I would probably use unflavored gelatin and peach nectar with diced peaches in it, as well as add a pinch of nutmeg or cloves to really punch up the spice.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #9: Marshmallow Parfaits

One of the great things about gelatin is its phenomenal anti-gravity properties, so I took the opportunity to bring a simple Jell-O dessert recipe, in this case the Marshmallow Parfait, into the space age with the tip-set method.

This recipe seems very basic, since you just make regular Jell-O, top it with whipped Jell-O and marshmallows, and then top that with more regular Jell-O. However, I was feeling up for a challenge when I made these, so I put a couple of portions into wine glasses and set them up in the refrigerator to lean against other objects at an angle so the gelatin would set at that angle.

The end result certainly didn't look like in the pictures, but I did get it to work. I think the tip-set method would work better with an all clear Jell-O dish instead of one using whipped Jell-O, because the fuzzy look of the whipped gelatin obscures the fancy angle a bit. It also probably helps to use a slightly less severe angle than I did here.

On top of that, the layering of the gelatin didn't quite work how it should have. For me, the final layer of clear gelatin just sank down underneath the whipped gelatin and marshmallows, so the triple-layer effect didn't actually happen. Maybe it would have if I had whipped the whipped Jell-O more or added more marshmallows? Not sure on that one.

Regardless, I very much enjoyed this recipe even if it wasn't Instagram worthy, as the kids say. I think the strawberry Jell-O flavor is my favorite flavor to stand on its own so far--in this recipe it's practically on its own, anyway. It really tastes like strawberries and has a good sweetness balance, even with the added marshmallows. Beyond that, the marshmallows just melt to foamy goo in the gelatin, which is nice especially as a contrast to the whipped Jell-O, which is also foamy, just in a different way. On the whole this is a basic but very effective gelatin dessert recipe that I daresay would be good with any flavor of gelatin one could want.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #8: Raspberry Chantilly

Here's another recipe I made quite a long time ago, but in this case I actually do have ingredients and results shots in addition to pictures of the recipe itself. Raspberry Chantilly is basically whipped raspberry gelatin mixed in with whipped cream and a little bit of peach jam.

Sorry about these images being sideways, but I tried uploading it at all different angles and it wouldn't go the way I wanted.

Making the recipe is easy enough, except that peach jam is too viscous and sticky to mix in evenly with anything, so it is difficult to distribute the jam even vaguely evenly. Aside from that, though, this dish comes together in a snap and makes quite a lot of fluffy, fruity cream.

However, the end result was a little lacking. Firstly, mixing Jell-O with whipped cream does dilute the intense sweetness of the gelatin, but then adding peach jam takes it back over the top, especially since I tended to bite into big clumps of it infrequently, for the reasons I described above. Secondly, even though I really only added a pinch of salt to the mix, as instructed, the salt was too noticeable in the final product, and I didn't care for that. It certainly was pretty, though!

As I find myself thinking time and again, though, if you would take this basic formula and swap out Jell-O for unflavored gelatin and a tart red juice (perhaps pomegranate or cranberry, if raspberry juice is too expensive or hard to obtain), it would create a nicely balanced, tasty dessert, so I still recommend the recipe with the aforementioned alterations.