The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #137: Barbecue Salad

Howdy, Jigglers! This week I picked up one of my favorite classic Jell-O mold designs. On my way home from the store, I was thrilled as I contemplated all the recipes that would look slick in that mold--that is, of course, until I checked the list of recipes I had chosen to make next and saw that the first one was Barbecue Salad.

This recipe has about a thousand variations. The problem is that none of them sounds good. You've got the regular salad, which is basically just a congealed Bloody Mary, you've got the cubes, which is congealed Bloody Mary concentrate, you've got a bunch of additions you can use to disguise the fact that you're eating a Bloody Mary, you've got shrimp cocktail with a congealed Bloody Mary, and you've got Barbecue Cheese Cracker Pie, which is a congealed Bloody Mary served atop a Cheez-It crust for some reason. Faced with this plethora of unappetizing options, I chose to make a Barbecue Salad with some additions because I've been down the "tomato sauce and nothing else" gelatin road, and I don't want to travel that road ever again.

Specifically, I chose to add lemon zest, celery salt, Worschester sauce, Tabasco, mayonnaise in a separate layer of the mold, some corn, and some peas. Corn and peas are fine accompaniments to barbecue, plus they should add some much-needed texture. Mayonnaise makes just about everything go over smoother (my husband calls me the Mayo Queen for this reason), and Worschester and spicy sauce never hurt a savory dish, I'm pretty sure. I used lemon juice in place of the lemon Jell-O flavoring, so I just threw in the zest to make it extra zingy, and I used some celery salt in place of regular salt to mimic the celery salad Jell-O flavor--also because my subconscious couldn't ignore the fact that I was making a Bloody Mary here.

In this view you can see the top mayonnaise-laden layer of the mold. To get it to stick to the main layer, I mixed about 12 teaspoons of the gelatin mixture into roughly a half cup of mayo once the gelatin was very thick. Then I poured the mayo mixture into the mold and popped it into the fridge while I added the vegetables to the main salad. Finally, I poured the main salad on top of the mayo layer in the mold. Since the mayo layer started melting upon unmolding, next time I would add maybe twice the amount of gelatin that I did, which should help it stay together a little better.

To fully appreciate (or distract me from) this dish, I also chose to serve it first alongside some actual barbecue. I made some oven-baked country-style ribs according to this recipe. That way I could really see how well or how terribly the Barbecue Salad fits with a barbecue meal.

Yes, it looks a bit like an evil jellyfish. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the way this salad tasted. While it wasn't at all reminiscent of barbecue per se, it also wasn't reminiscent of tomato snot. The corn and peas gave it some texture, and the mayonnaise made it creamy. The gelatin part itself was mostly tangy from the lemon and savory in general, with a little hint of spice at the tail end. Not bad at all!

I was so conerned about how awful this recipe was going to be that I procrastinated for at least a month on Jell-O making because of it. Now I feel incredibly silly for having done so, especially given that I know I will end up eating every scrap of this salad.

Since I added the mayonnaise layer, I ended up with some extra salad gelatin that fit neatly into an individual mold. I was concerned that the chunky nature of this salad would prevent the ridges from showing up, but there they are!

Now, as much as I have been praising the taste of Barbecue Salad, let me reiterate: this has nothing in common with barbecue. It would be fine as a side salad with barbecue, sure, but it would be equally fine as a side salad with just about anything. Roast chicken, egg salad, Reubens, shish kabobs...the possibilities are endless. In fact, the recipe notes constantly bug you to eat this with shrimp as though it were a gelatinized cocktail sauce, and in practice it isn't that different. I could even imagine little cubes of the mixture topped with individual shrimp on a cocktail stick as a fairly decent hors d'ourve. As much as I wasn't anticipating this, you might be onto something with this one, General Foods!

Gelatin in the Wild: Jubes Lychee Flavor

Howdy, Jigglers! Have you ever seen a food product so odd, so indescribable, that you simply must try it? I often find myself in this helpless condition, which is precisely the state in which I bought a pouch of Jubes at the Asian foods store near where I live.

 Image courtesy of justasianfood.com

 

Seeing this on the shelves, I could not make heads or tails of what exactly the Jubes were supposed to be. I still have no idea what nata de coco is, except that it has something to do with coconuts.  Since I like coconuts, lychees, and chewy things, I figured I couldn't go wrong with lychee Jubes. Plus, I admired the creativity in suggesting that the cubes could be used as a cocktail accoutrement.

On feeling the cubes, I noticed at once that, whatever this substance is, it isn't gelatin. It's much, much firmer. It almost feels like a cut of a solid object, with only a small amount of give.

This texture holds true on the tooth, where it is every bit as stiff as a gummy worm left for a few too many weeks in the backseat of your car.

As for the flavor, it is as though the lychee flavor was only infused into the liquid surrounding the Jubes instead of into the stuff of the cubes themselves. However, the flavoring is not overly artificial, nor too strong or weak. The interior of the cubes is sickly sweet and grainy in taste, but it does not taste like anything in particular.

But I cannot stress strongly enough how chewy these things are! It took a very long time to eat them, and eating the whole pouch gave me a powerful jawache. Also, in retrospect, I don't have any earthly idea what Jubes could add to a cocktail. They wouldn't melt, but the insipid lychee flavor would not meld with any cocktail I can think of, and the texture would not impart any benefit.

Perhaps the other flavors of Jubes are delightful, but I doubt it. At any rate, the Lychee Jubes are not worth the physical effort required to eat them.

Way Out There #4: I made my own Joys of Jell-O-alike Recipe!

 Howdy, Jigglers! After having made a couple of other different Jell-O recipes lately, I had some leftover ingredients left lying around, so I decided to combine them to come up with my very own JOJ-style gelatin dish! To really understand the General Foods Jell-O scientists, you have to get into their heads and start to think like them, to wit: "How do I throw these random cheap foods together with Jell-O to make something that will pass as an innovative fruit salad to show off to the bridge club?"

Specifically, I had some grape juice, some pineapple tidbits, and some mini marshmallows. None of that makes any sense together, but that's never stopped General Foods, now has it?

 

So I proceeded to let some unflavored gelatin bloom over the grape juice, then heat it until the gelatin was dissolved. Thereupon I allowed it to cool until very thick, mixed in the pineapple and marshmallows, and scooped it all into a mold to set.

Regarding the appearance of this salad, I was thankful I put in so many marshmallows because otherwise it would have looked quite dark, especially since the pineapple tidbits are not quite recognizeable with a purplish tint to them. I do like the look it has of the particles trying but unable to escape the gelatin matrix; I can't escape Jell-O either.

 

 

As for the taste, it was pleasant but fairly generic. It was sweet and fruity. The marshmallows were the best part by far with their squishy fluffiness. To make it a home run I would have liked to add some quartered pecans for even more textural variation, or perhaps some mandarin orange slices to solidify the tropical theme. However, I was trying to make this exclusively with ingredients I already had on hand, which in this case would have entailed adding vegetables or meats, so given that limitation I am satisfied with the result.

Now I would be remiss if I didn't, in true Joys of Jell-O fashion, write up an entry for the book describing this umpteenth fruit-and-gelatin salad, which of course I would put in the Two-Way Salads chapter because half the fruit salads live there for some reason despite clearly being desserts:

Pineapple-Marshmallow Sorbet

This molded delight will simultaneously 

transport your guests to Tahiti and Provence

with its unique flavor combinations. We added

marshmallows for just a hint of decadence.

Garnish with whipped cream for a dessert salad

or mayonnaise for a side salad.

 

Doesn't that description just excite the palate?

Well, unfortunately this time I cannot spurn or congratulate General Foods for the outcome of this recipe. I have to take a good, long look in the mirror and say, "Self, this recipe was decent, I guess." Now I know how General Foods must feel.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #18: Grape Juice Bavarian

 Howdy, Jigglers! Thankfully our next recipe is a dessert recipe, and a very simple one at that. The Grape Juice Bavarian is a basic combination of grape juice-flavored gelatin and whipped cream. Since I used unflavored gelatin instead of Jell-O, I wanted to focus this recipe on the grape juice flavor, so I replaced all the water with grape juice, but everything else stayed the same, as indicated below.

I spent some extra time blending the two mixtures together, as I wanted to achieve an even color, but it didn't entirely work. 

Honestly there's not much else to say about the process of creating this dish. On the results I can only say that it tastes like a very thick purple cow. Has anybody else had a purple cow in their day?

It's fine on the whole. Nothing extremely special, but not bad either. It's the most neutral recipe yet, I think. Someday I might try it again with the anachronistic grape Jell-O flavor for extra grapiness.

So thanks General Foods for making a recipe about which it is impossible to have an opinion.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #123: Summer Salad

 Howdy, Jigglers! I got too lucky last time I played Jell-O Roulette and got the Avocado Pie, which at least theoretically speaking is a dessert. This time, due to having some particular leftover vegetables after making a soup, I got to make Summer Salad.

Though it isn't the most appetizing-sounding of recipes, in a way I was excited for it. Out of all the "salad" recipes, this is the purest: a vegetable-flavored gelatin matrix mixed with a minimum of weird ingredients envelops salad vegetables. That's right: not salad vegetables and fish, or salad vegetables and fruit, or any other inexplicable combination. Just salad vegetables. The simplicity was refreshing, in theory.

Besides, it's summer! That means you have to make Summer Salad, right?

Anyway, as I said, I already had most of the ingredients on hand for this one, including enough celery that I decided to go ahead and puree a bunch of celery to express its juices to use with unflavored gelatin in place of the Salad Gelatin, which of course is no longer available (I wonder why...).  The only other change I made to the ingredients, though, was replacing the regular or onion salt with celery salt, just to punch up the celery-ness even more. Other than that, I made the recipe exactly as written.

May I take this opportunity to state that the photos of Jell-O salad molds in JOJ are definitely not to scale with the recipes as written? Case in point:

Honestly, this is one of the better-looking gelatin salads I've made, but it's not nearly as pretty as the picture. And I'm just now noticing that there are clearly green onion slivers in the photo, though they aren't in the recipe. Come on, General Foods!

The celery juice turned the whole thing slightly murky, but not too bad. Now, the taste of this salad was about as you would expect. It tastes of celery and cucumber with a little salt and vinegar. The green pepper flavor, which I usually find overpowering, was barely noticeable. The tomato, however, is a different story. I like tomatoes, but for some reason they just do not work in this salad. Maybe if I had gotten a less ripe or less flavorful tomato it actually would have been better, but the umami savoriness of the tomato mixed with the strong celery overtones was not a success.

I'm going to go ahead and call it: I would never serve the Summer Salad to anyone even though I didn't hate it. It's passable, but the same combination of vegetables served over, you know, some lettuce and salad dressing would be more palatable and wouldn't make people think I'm batty. General Foods, why did you insist on putting vegetables in Jell-O?

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #80: Avocado Pie

Howdy, Jigglers! It's time for another wild and woolly recipe from 1964 Jell-O-Land. Avocado Pie has been staring me in the face since I got Joys of Jell-O, and I've never known whether to be more exited or more scared for it. But now it's time to take an up-close-and-personal look at this beast because I finally made it.

 

This photo has never sufficiently illustrated what this pie is supposed to be. The recipe isn't much better:

As per usual, I swapped out some ingredients, in this case using unflavored gelatin and a few tablespoons of sugar in place of the Jell-O and quadrupling the quantity of lime juice. Everything else, though, was as indicated.

 

The method for making this lime-avocado-pineapple-cream cheese-whipped cream concoction is basically no different from the normal "make Jell-O, chill until thick, fold stuff into it" routine that 80% of these recipes follow, except for the mashing avocado and cream cheese part. The further I got into the process, though, the more it started occurring to me just how strange this combination of ingredients is. It's half everything tropical and half dairy, which is odd on its own, let alone considering that the avocado itself is a creamy ingredient. More on that later.

At the last moment I had the brilliant idea to add a drop of green food coloring because, even with half an avocado mashed up in it and a lot of lime juice, the pie mixture was basically still white--again, the sheer preponderance of dairy in this pie would make a Wisconsonian blush. However, since the mixture was also very thick, the food coloring didn't dissolve very well, though it managed to give the final product a slight green tinge.

Tastewise, the Avocado pie is...just as confusing as anticipated. It is extremely creamy and thick, but not very sweet at all, even with all that pineapple and pineapple juice in there, plus the added sugar and sugar I added to the whipped cream. It's also surprisingly dense considering the quantity of whipped cream in there. What probably isn't surprising is that the lime and pineapple flavors totally drown out the subtle avocado taste of this pie. Honestly, you would have the same pie if you took out the avocado, only it would look a little more sane. The overall package is more strange than anything, but it's certainly edible--just not immediately recognizeable as a dessert.

 

Over the course of a couple of days, though, the flavors in this pie melded together a little bit, creating something that wouldn't be totally out of place as a key lime cheesecake or something, which is a pie I would really like, I think. Doesn't need avocado or pineapple, though.

If you were wondering, as I was, if the gelatin would preserve the avocado over a long-ish period of time, the answer is kind of! I was delighted with how not-brown the avocado stayed over the three-and-a-half days I had it. The chunks on top got a little discolored, but not badly considering.

 

All that being said, while I cannot wholeheartedly endorse this recipe, I can commend its inventiveness. I never would have thought of putting avocado in a pie. However, I do have some suggestions for any hapless Jiggler hoping to make the world's best Avocado Pie:

1. Mash up all of your avocado into the mixture instead of leaving half of it in chunks

2. Eliminate the crushed pineapple, but instead use pineapple juice in place of all of the water

3. If you want to use food coloring, add it to the gelatin mixture as soon as it comes off of the heat

4. Add the zest of one lime to the avocado and cream cheese mixture

5. Make the pineapple garnish as pictured; I skipped this step and the pie looked very plain without it

 General Foods get an "Eh" for effort for this oddball recipe, but if you think about it, this kind of recipe is the reason we love vintage Jell-O in particular: it breaks all the molds!

;)

Way Out There Recipe #3: Coffee Jelly

Howdy, Jigglers! Today I would like to introduce you to a gelatin-based treat that literally took me years to perfect. Technically, anyway. I first made Coffee Jelly way back in 2018 after hearing about it here. It looked like something I would just love (I mean, you had me at "sweetened condensed milk"), so I made a big pan of it. I no longer remember exactly what I did to make it flop so badly, but suffice it to say that it was so weak and flavorless that I didn't see fit to post about it. If I recall correctly, the jelly itself was not sweet enough, it was too soft and didn't cut into cubes nicely at all, and it was just very weak on the coffee flavor.

I did, however, photograph it.

 

Those aren't cubes. Not even close.

Fast forward to March 2021, when we first started getting some warmer mornings, and for some reason this recipe poppped back into my mind. Armed with better knowledge of coffee after having made the switch from an automatic drip coffeemaker to an electric percolator a year or two ago, I thought it was worth revisiting.

After having failed miserably the first time to make coffee jelly, I made sure to do a couple of extra things to help its chances at being tasty this time around. First, I used this flavored decaf grind from Coffee Beanery (in a coarse grind for perking purposes), as it was what I was drinking anyway, and I thought the flavor would add some richness. I also let it percolate for an extra-long time to get the strongest brew possible.

Then I poured it into a bowl and added two heaping tablespoons of sugar and two heaping tablespoons of my favorite unflavored gelatin (from Vital Proteins--I know I'm name dropping a lot of companies here, but they aren't paying me; I just want you to be able to recreate what I did if desired) and then mixed well. I then greased a loaf pan because it was small enough that I would get the desired cube thickness with the quantity of liquid that I had, and when the coffee was cooled, I put it in the pan and refrigerated until completely hardened.

 

See the difference between how this cut and how my first attempt cut? I attribute that to adding more gelatin per cup than the first time.

Coffee³

 

The next question was about the creamy liquid swirling around amongst those cubes. I didn't have any sweetened condensed milk on hand (I don't know what's gotten into me, I should always have at least two cans around), but I had heavy cream, so I ended up heating the cream with about a tablespoon of sugar and roughly half a cup of water, just to make drinking cream a little less intense. I only cooked this mixture until the sugar was melted and mixed in, then cooled it.

That's more like it.

This time, my coffee jelly was, in a word, decadent. I definitely got a hint of the butter rum flavor, which was sumptuous with the sweetened cream. The jelly itself was strongly coffee-flavored, not too sweet, and close to being chewy, which is my personal favorite texture of gelatin. My loaf pan made enough jelly for three small cups or two large cups (though I can't imagine eating a tall glass of this concoction all at once, that's how rich it is). Coffee jelly is not going to be replacing cold brew as my daily coffee fix in the summer any time soon, just because of how much sugar is involved, but it makes a great treat. It would be divine served after an al fresco summer brunch.

The next time I make this, I will use some sweetened condensed milk, though I will have to convince myself to use it sparingly. As far as the jelly goes, the only thing I might want to do is make double the amount by making two percolators' worth of coffee.

"But...I don't have a percolator!" I hear you say. Well, in that case, I can also make some suggestions. The first one is to use an automatic drip machine, just with a couple of extra tablespoons of coffee added, maybe four extra for a full pot or two extra for half a pot. This will make your coffee strong to start with. Secondly, if you have any doubts about the strength of your coffee, add some instant coffee to it. Cooling down the gelatin reduces the strength of its flavor massively, and even if the final product is pretty strong, the cream will cut its flavor considerably, so you want to err on the side of too strong rather than too weak. Alternatively, you could cut out the middleman and use instant coffee to begin with. It seems that's what most people do, so it must work. 

In any case, I highly recommend giving coffee jelly a try this spring or summer. It's rich, it's stylish, and, most importantly, it's a gelatin dish that has been trendy within the past decade, and that's enough in my book. Enjoy!

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #53: Rainbow Cake

 Howdy, Jigglers! Today we are going to discuss the very first pictured recipe in The Joys of Jell-O: the Rainbow Cake. An impressive dessert, this isn't really a cake per se; rather, it is five different flavors of whipped Jell-O layered together in a springform pan, then released from the pan and iced with whipped cream (no, not Dream Whip--not now, not ever).

Although this recipe is literally the first thing that catches your eye upon opening up JOJ, I hadn't been able to make it sooner due to a total lack of springform pans in my kitchen. However, a couple of months ago I happened upon just such a pan at a craft store, and the Rainbow Cake immediately sprang to mind, so I bought it even though I came to the store looking for fabric. So it goes.

So now that I had a way to make it, I had to figure out what to use for ingredients. While I am all behind swapping out the Jell-O for unflavored gelatin + an appropriately flavored juice, I decided to stick with regular old Jell-O in this instance. The reason for this is that the spectacle of this dish comes from the colors, and without messing about with food coloring, I wasn't going to get the colors I wanted out of natural juices. Someday I might try making this again with juices, but I really wanted to make this Rainbow Cake look as much like the photo as possible. The only issue I had was that I could not find black raspberry Jell-O anywhere--I'm thinking they no longer make it, so I substituted black cherry Jell-O.

One thing that only occurred to me as I was starting to make the Jell-O for this dish is that the cake looks pretty tall, and my springform pan is the shorter kind usually used for cheesecakes. To remedy this (or, rather, to jerry-rig it as best I could), I lined the sides of my pan with parchment paper cut far taller than indicated in the recipe, hoping that by the time the layers of gelatin reached the top of the pan, it would hold the paper taut around the sides, enabling it to support the weight of the top layers. It's whipped Jell-O, anyhow, so how heavy could it possibly be?

 

So then I proceeded to start cooking, cooling, and whipping the five different Jell-Os. To streamline the process, I cooked one at a time, and when that was done cooking, I put it on a trivet on the counter to start cooling and started to cook the next flavor. When that was done, I put the first batch in the fridge, the second batch on the trivet, and fired up the third batch. When the third batch was cooked, the first batch was ready to whip, so I got the fourth batch started on the stove while I whipped the first batch, and kept cycling the flavors around like that until they were all whipped and in the pan. The pan stayed in the fridge between each addition. Even timing it like this, it took a long time to get the cake assembled. Plan a morning or an afternoon to get this thing ready.

As you can see, only a little bit of the top layer ended up exceeding the height of my pan, so afterwards I cut down the parchment paper substantially. I imagine that for the photo in the recipe book, they either used double batches of each Jell-O flavor or a springform pan that was smaller in diameter to make the cake taller.

Here you can see the texture of the whipped gelatin as it is added to the cake. This was the other main thing that drew me to this recipe: whipped Jell-O is great, so I was excited to taste a rainbow of flavors, all in whipped form.

After the gelatin had set, I carefully released it from the springform pan...

And gingerly removed the parchment paper...

At this point, I was worried. My stomach started to sink. I knew that some of the odd shape of this was due to the parchment paper, but I couldn't help but wonder if the layers were going to be so uneven as to ruin the effect. I pressed on, though, and got the cream whipped and on the cake.

At least now, I thought, the cake doesn't look so ungainly. Now it was time for the big reveal...

Now I was content again. It didn't look too uneven, although I have no idea why some layers fluffed up more than others. The point is, it was close enough. And the taste? Though I think this would certainly taste better using fruit juices instead of Jell-O, I wasn't disappointed. As I have mentioned previously, whipping Jell-O does dilute the flavor some, so it wasn't overpowering, especially if you had a bite with whipped cream. That was the best. Honestly, what would make this cake truly excellent is adding a layer of whipped cream in between each gelatin layer, although that would make it very tall, and it would ruin the rainbow effect.

One thing to note with the Rainbow Cake is that it does not store very well: You could refrigerate it in a covered cake pan, in which case the whipped cream will dry out, or you can smoosh some plastic wrap on it, causing the whipped cream to peel off of the cake when you unwrap it. I recommend serving this cake to a group to finish it off quickly, or perhaps splitting it between two or three people for your entire meal (not that I would ever condone such a meal).

Also, if you aren't against adding some extra carbs to the Rainbow Cake, you could always just add the boxes of Jell-O to white cake mix separately, then layer them together in a springform pan and bake it. It would look just about the same, but it would taste more like a traditional cake. I bet that would be great too, and probably take a lot less time. Less jiggle factor, though.

All in all, even though it was laborious to make, the Rainbow Cake was worth the effort because it really makes a statement. Unlike the Birthday Surprise, this feels like it would even be suitable for a normal birthday celebration, so I am one-hundred percent behind this recipe.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #126: Fruited Perfection

Howdy, Jigglers! Today we are going to talk about a Jell-O recipe that I put off for the longest time. Fruited Perfection is a molded salad featuring pineapple (no sweat), nuts (still perfectly normal), olives (I can deal with that), and cabbage (what are we doing now, General Foods?) all mixed together in a gelatin matrix of consomme (what is this?) flavored with vinegar and tropical Jell-O flavors. Of course. You might start to recognize why I postponed making this recipe for so long.

But the deal here at the Actual Joys of Jell-O is that I make all the recipes, so I couldn't skip it, and I just happened to have some broth I could use to make consomme, so why not? Or so I thought at the time.

First, I started with the consomme. I had read about how to make it before, but I had never actually tried it. I took some quail-and-chicken stock (long story) and brought it to a simmer with whipped egg whites in it, which did mostly work to clarify it, though it wasn't the most beautiful consomme ever devised. Then I skimmed off everything I could from the top and ran the consomme through a strainer, because what could it hurt?

 

To this I added two tablespoons of unflavored gelatin and heated it until almost boiling. After allowing the consomme to cool a bit, I added the vinegar and the lime juice that I used instead of lime Jell-O. This is where things first started to go awry: upon adding the acidic ingredients, the nice, clear consomme turned a sickly, milky white color. As instructed, I added some of the consomme-gelatin mixture to my mold on its own, arranging a few olive slices on top as it started to thicken. However, even at the time I figured you wouldn't be able to see the olives from the top, since the opacity slider on the gelatin had moved far past its initial setting.

 

Once the rest of the gelatin got to the "very thick" stage, I mixed in the rest of the ingredients, then added the newly chunky mixture to the other gelatin in the mold and refrigerated until completely hardened. Upon unmolding, I found myself with this:

 

 

The first practical problem with this mold is that it does not cut nicely. The cabbage strips make it turn into a gibbering pile of goo however delicately you try to slice it.

The second problem with this recipe is everything else. It doesn't look nice (I guess it looks kind of like molded coleslaw, which would be much better) and it tastes awful. I hate to be crass on this blog, but the taste of this dish is like if you went to a barbeque, ate some coleslaw, fruit salad, and chicken, then vomited all of that up, only if it were cold as it came up.

The writers of this recipe went very wrong when they were arguing over whether to make this a savory salad or a fruit salad and ultimately decided to make it both. The acidity of the vinegar and lime juice do not complement the consomme, neither of which are complemented by the cabbage and pineapple combination. The nuts and olives are fine on their own, but don't fit in with the other components one bit.

 

Before I tasted this, I thought that this recipe read like someone constructed a "Things that Work Well in Jell-O" dart board and threw five or six darts at it to determine what they would include. It tastes like it, too. I forced myself to eat about half of a "slice", then tossed the rest. My goal with all of these recipes is to make the best possible version of each one, and I believe I did that here, but much as an actor cannot transcend an asinine writer in a play, the best possible ingredients cannot transcend a garbage recipe.

I tried. Don't subject yourself to Fruited Perfection. I don't think the recipe writers did.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #135: Sunset Salad

Howdy, Jigglers! Today I am tackling what is probably one of the most popular non-dessert Jell-O recipes ever invented, the Sunset Salad. Even my mom, who doesn't cotton to the idea of using Jell-O for anything outside of fruit salads, liked this colorful mold of carrots and pineapple.

 

Before proceeding any further, I would just like to say how much I love the look of this salad as styled here. It is a triumph, and it sets a big, scary precedent for how this salad should look. Even the garnishes look luxe, and I'm particularly happy to see that carrot ribbons predate Instagram.

Back to the actual recipe, though. Because this salad is so beautiful when clear, I broke down and just bought orange Jell-O and followed the recipe to the letter instead of using orange juice and unflavored gelatin. I also omitted the pecans. Okay, I did make one substantial change: I added another tablespoon of unflavored gelatin to the Jell-O to make sure the molds would hold their shape nicely, plus I just prefer harder gelatin in general.

The recipe is very simple to make, but I was disappointed in how little it made. I filled four individual molds of various sizes (one small, two medium, and one large), but I couldn't have filled my Bundt pan even halfway with this recipe, and it wouldn't have filled my fish mold either. Again, my suggestions are to follow.

I think this turned out looking close to as nice as the photo from the book. It certainly looks nice, and I  enjoyed how it tasted as well, enough to eat it with lunch all week and then miss it when it was gone. The carrots provide a crunchy contrast to the tropical fruit flavors of the gelatin, but they are sweet enough not to be incongruous with the overall taste. It tastes very bright and summery as well--this would be a perfect side at an Easter dinner or a spring picnic to get you out of those winter blues.

Now, if I were to make this again (and this recipe might have to go into the venerable "I plan on making this again" pile), I would do it a little differently. For best visual and taste appeal, I would leave all ingredients the way I left them except I would double the quanity of water and dissolve a package of pineapple Jell-O alongside the orange Jell-O. This would achieve the orange-pineapple effect that the recipe calls for, and it would make the mold prettier and bigger. If you try this, you might want to increase the amount of carrots and pinapple a little, maybe a quarter or a third, but no more. That way the mold will be a little clearer and provide more of a "things are floating in the Jell-O" aesthetic, as seen in the recipe photograph.

 

As-is, though, the Sunset Salad was still a superb success for a Jell-O recipe with vegetables in it. For anyone who doesn't dig carrots, this might be just what you need to get that beta carotene in. General Foods gets a gold star for this one.