Way Out There #5: Lychee Gelatin Mold

 Howdy, Jigglers! It has been a while, but you know how sometimes life gets in between you and your Jell-O-Quest. Today I am presenting a gelatin that is the solution to a mystery that's been lurking in my brain for years. You see, years ago I was at a Chinese Buffet checking out the Jell-O selection (as one does) when I saw a clear gelatin. My curiosity piqued, I had to get some. To my delight and surprise, it was delicious, but I had no idea what flavor it could have been.

 

Fast forward to this summer, when I happened to see a couple of huge cans of lychees at the store, and it all clicked. I believed the flavor to have been lychee, so I snagged the cans to try out my own lychee gelatin and see if that could truly be the answer I'd been seeking all this time.

Knowing how canned fruit syrups typically are, I added a tablespoon of honey to it to make sure the resulting gelatin would be sweet enough. This is where I erred. You should always taste the syrup before sweetening it to gauge how much, if any, sweetener it requires. In this case, I think the lychee syrup on its own would have been of optimal sweetness, and then I went and pushed it over the edge with honey.

Unlike the gelatin that originally inspired this project, I went ahead and put most of the lychees in after the gelatin had cooled somewhat. This was mostly for nutritional reasons and to bulk out the mold, though I also didn't have many other ideas as to how to use the lychees, so that was a factor as well. What I didn't realize is the visual impression this would give the mold.

 

It looks like a pile of eyeballs! After this Halloween, a friend and I decided that next year we should have a Halloween party with fun, spooky foods, and this just rocketed to the top of the list.

As I mentioned, it did turn out a little too sweet, but not bad, and most importantly, lychee certainly did turn out to be the gelatin flavor I had been after from those long-ago days at the Chinese buffet. I even liked having the fruit in there. It doesn't cut super cleanly, but it does cut, and I like lychees personally.

All in all, I'm happy I did this experiment. It solved a years-long mystery, it got some fruit into my body when I didn't have much fruit around, and it tasted alright despite my honey blunder. I bet it would look much clearer without the honey, too. Next time I'll know better.

Hopefully soon I'll get around to doing another Jell-O recipe. It's been too long!

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #93: Avocado Strawberry Ring

Howdy, Jigglers! Next on my list of randomly selected gelatin delights was Avocado Strawberry Ring, one of the most perplexing recipes in the Two-Way Salads section of Joys of Jell-O. My mind knows that avocados have such a subtle taste that there's no reason they couldn't play nice with strawberries, but the reptile part of my brain goes "not a sweet food."

But here's the picture evidence that General Foods saw fit to combine avocados and strawberries, so I had to follow suit sooner or later. In this case, sooner.

I followed the recipe to the letter, only swapping out 2 tablespoons of unflavored gelatin, 3 tablespoons of sugar, the juice and zest of one lime, one drop of green food coloring, and two of yellow for the Jell-O. I know that's a lot of sugar, but with all the citrus going on in this recipe, I figured it was needed. I also added the zest of one lemon, and instead of just one tablespoon of lemon juice, I used the juice of two lemons after tasting the gelatin mixture (before chilling). Since I avoid commercial gelatin mixes to get better flavor and a little less sugar, I've been taste testing more lately in the early stages of making these recipes to ensure I get the best possible ratios of the different ingredients.

Oh, and another thing I sadly had to change: I didn't make Avocado Strawberry Ring in a ring mold. My only ring mold at this point is a Bundt pan, and the quantity of filling I ended up with would have been too small to make a nice ring in that, so instead of tripling the recipe to make that happen, I just went with a smaller mold.

Other than ingredient and mold swaps, though, I made the recipe as written. My advice to the newcomer: when your gelatin is slightly chilled, add the avocado first and then the mayo. You see, I didn't think it would take me very long to mash the avocado, so I chunked in the mayonnaise first, then peeled and mashed it. However, in that time the cold mayo started to thicken up the gelatin even more, making it more difficult to combine everything smoothly in the end.

 

So how does this thing taste? It certainly has a nice creamy citrus flavor, something along the lines of a key lime pie, but you do get the little chunks of avocado in there that definitely taste like avocado. I know the inclusion of mayonnaise in this seems a little weird, but it doesn't taste like mayo--that just adds a little extra creaminess.

Even though I quite liked this salad on its own, the combination with strawberries is...strange. Not bad, just odd. Strawberries and lemons or strawberries and oranges would be fine, but strawberry and lime just isn't a combo that I needed in my life, especially strawberries with creamy avo lime. I might have preferred pineapple rings or orange slices with this, honestly. The strawberries sure do make a striking image with the green gelatin, though. I wonder if that's a big part of why they were put together in this recipe.

All of that said, I readily ate all of the Avocado Strawberry...mold, so it wasn't that bad. If you were wondering, gelatin does a decent job of preserving mashed avocado, though if I were serving this to others, I would do so within one day of setting the mold, because the avocado does start to slowly discolor after that time. I do think that avocado could be a really neat addition to a chicken salad-style gelatin mold, which makes it even weirder that I don't think it features in a single savory recipe in JOJ. The sixties were weird, man.

I give this recipe a pass because it was pretty good, but the fruit pairing needed work. At least I can commend General Foods on their willingness to be bold with the range of ingredients included in their cookbook. If this cookbook came out today, it would be called "Will It Jell-O?" and the answer would always be yes.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #71: Grasshopper Pie

Howdy Jigglers! No, it isn't what you think! I haven't lost my marbles and gone and put insects into Jell-O (yet, I suppose). No, the Grasshopper Pie is slightly more innocent than that, the "grasshopper" in the title referring to the cocktail of the same name, a minty, creamy tipple that my sister in law once referred to as "a boozy Shamrock Shake."

This recipe came to me courtesy of a randomly generated sequence of recipes that my husband and I picked out a few weeks ago. It then sent me on a safari through the local liquor stores to find creme de menthe, creme de cacao, and chocolate wafer cookies. I ended up going with Oreos, but I could swear Keebler used to make something akin to a chocolate animal cracker that I think would be perfect for this. (Check out my post regarding Crumb Crust for the crust recipe.)

As per usual I did not use storebought Jell-O but instead unflavored gelatin, as I really didn't think that lime would pair well with mint and chocolate. I also used whipped cream instead of Dream Whip because that stuff is gross. Other than that, I followed the main recipe as written. Since I used Oreos for the crust, though, I didn't think it needed any additional sugar, so I omitted that.

So to get started, I made the crust. I very loosely eyeballed the quantity of ground cookie crumbs to mix with the butter, and I think this was my first problem. I think I needed a little more crumb or a little less butter. My mixture basically covered the entire pie plate, though, and so I thought I was good, especially since previously I've struggled to get crumb crusts thin enough. But once I baked the crust, a lot of the crumb mixture sank down the sides of the dish, leaving some unsightly, craggy gaps. I just decided to press on, though.

 

My apparently inimitable inspiration.

While the crust cooled, I dissolved the gelatin in the water with some sugar, mixed in the cold liquids, and set that to chill. Meanwhile, I made the meringue and whipped cream, and then whipped most of the gelatin into that.

After the semi-cooled gelatin was mixed with the whipped cream and meringue, I knew that it wouldn't take long for it to start to set, and since I was really excited to try to get my Grasshopper Pie to look like the one pictured, I didn't wait long at all to check to see if it was ready. Sadly, though, it wasn't soon enough, because the whole kit and kaboodle had reached the "hard gloopy" stage where it was thick and starting to hold its own shape. At first I didn't realize what had happened and scooped it into the crust as written, but then I saw that it wouldn't settle down with a flat top. Honestly, if I were to make this pie again, I would probably pour the mix into the crust after seriously two or three minutes in the refrigerator after beating it all together. If the crust is adequately hardened by baking, it should withstand a slight liquidiness in the filling.

My poor timing didn't even end there, though. When the pie was ready to receive its marbled glaze of clear gelatin, I saw that the clear gelatin was too hardened to go on right, so I microwaved it for 10 seconds and poured it over top. I should have checked the temperature after heating but before pouring it on, as it had completely liquefied in that short span of time, so try as I might, I couldn't get it to marble with a spoon as I had hoped. All of that is just a roundabout way of saying: this is not a particularly pretty pie.

See? Not a beauty queen.

It looks like the creamy gelatin just separated from the clear gelatin as curds separate from whey, so you can't tell at all that that's intentional. I think the color turned out just fine, though. I was originally a little concerned that the creme de cacao would turn the creme de menthe color too brown, but it didn't do that at all, so no additional food coloring was needed.

To add insult to injury, my poor crust didn't really hold together as I'd have liked. I attribute this to having used Oreos. Next time I've got to find a better chocolate cookie to use. Maybe one of those crispy Tate's cookies? I considered getting some of those, but they all had chocolate chips in them. Thinking about it, though, if those started to melt in the oven, I bet they'd solidify and help the crust's structural integrity when they cooled. Hmm.

Anyway, we're here to find out how this monstrosity tastes! And...it tasted pretty good. The creme de menthe was so pungent smelling the whole time I was working on this that I had a headache and was fairly convinced that it would taste way too sweet and artificially flavored, but it really didn't end up tasting that way at all. It is very boozy, first of all, but mostly the effect is of a mint-chocolate chip ice cream but turned into a cream pie. The filling has the consistency of a rich creamy pudding, and the crust, for all its faults, tasted like an Oreo crumb crust should. All in all, I really liked this actually, which is good because I have roughly a liter of each of the liqueurs left over.

As indicated in the text of the recipe, I did have a lot of pie filling left over after filling the pie--enough for four servings. If you didn't want to mess about with a pie crust at all (and I don't blame you if that's the case), the way I dolled it up as pictured above also makes a perfectly decent dessert with a retro flair. If I were to do that again (and I might, for reasons that should be all too plain by now), the only thing I might do differently is mix in some mini chocolate chips at some point or sprinkle some over top. I've never seen chocolate incorporated into a Jell-O recipe before setting, though. Maybe it turns out gross. I have no idea. To be on the safe side maybe I'd stick to putting the chips in just before serving. If I were going to make the whole recipe in this configuration, I would also let the clear gelatin harden completely, flake it, and then mix that in to the creamy gelatin before letting it set completely. That would give it a little textural contrast.

Whether in a sherbet glass or in a crumb crust, the Grasshopper Pie takes a little effort and investment to make, and I certainly don't recommend it for the "busy homemaker," who will undoubtedly let some part of the gelatin set for far too long before proceeding to the next step, but it is a spectacle of a dessert, both in terms of looks and taste. I love mint. I love chocolate. What's not to like? Well, I wish I could get this dish without getting all the alcohol in there, but if life doesn't give you non-alcoholic creme liqueurs, play the cards you're dealt and make the Grasshopper Pie anyway! You only live once, you know?

So congrats to General Foods: you have made a Jell-O recipe so complex it might just require a lifetime of practice to perfect but yet tasty enough to warrant that practice.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #154: Sea Dream Salad

Howdy Jigglers! I made this Sea Dream Salad several weeks ago when I realized I just happened to have all the ingredients anyway, then I completely forgot to write a post about it until just now. Don't worry, though: just because I forgot about it for a while doesn't mean I was subconsciously trying to purge this seafood mold from my memory. Just trust me on this.

The mold part of this salad cooks up about like any other savory Jell-O mold: dissolve gelatin in hot water, add vinegar and other flavorings, and cool, except this time we also have to strain out the grated cucumber because this is a clear mold that is merely cucumber infused. Then chill and unmold.

As usual I omitted the grated onion, but I followed the recipe exactly with the exception of using real lime juice and unflavored gelatin instead of lime Jell-O. I also added one drop of green food coloring and one drop yellow coloring to get the right color. Just green is a little too "luck of the Irish" to come across as "lime".

I was pleased to be able to use my mini ring molds for this, as it made just the perfect size of salad for a nice light side dish or appetizer with the shrimp in the middle.

Weirdly enough, this salad is pretty good! Little shrimps within a cucumber-y, lime-y, slightly spicy gelatin ring actually tastes okay. This is a very modernist take on a salad, but it is light and refreshing and flavorful.

I would probably serve this salad to guests as an appetizer before a relatively formal meal, but it would also be good at a picnic or brunch. I don't know how I feel about adding cream cheese to this, though. I feel like that would make it too heavy and rich. The original version, however, I can unreservedly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good shrimp cocktail, which was a total surprise to me. I thought that surely this recipe would be gross. So good job, General Foods, for shocking this old Jell-O hound.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #157: Party Potato Salad

Howdy, Jigglers! As I mentioned in my last post, I got a whole new batch of Jell-O recipes to make next, including some heirloom recipes from family members. However, thanks to random.org, the first recipe on the list was Party Potato Salad.

Potato salad is always a treat, but inserted into Jell-O, it just seems...intimidating. Especially when it's in a two-tiered gelatin tower with a clear gelatin layer and a whipped gelatin layer flavored like...oranges. Nevertheless, I forged on with some storebought potato salad, the cucumber and pimiento as called for, the vinegar, and a combination of orange juice and unflavored gelatin. You'll notice I omitted the green pepper rings. I don't intrinsically hate green peppers, but as a child I got severely burned out on them, so now I'm fairly choosy as to what I put them in.

Since I substituted orange juice for the orange flavoring in the Jell-O, I wanted to make sure that the orange flavor wasn't too overpowering, so I used 1.5 cups of water and 1.5 cups of orange juice for the liquid. First, I diced and salted the cucumber so it would have time to drain out excess liquid. Then, as per usual, I bloomed the gelatin on top of the juice mixture, heated it until the gelatin was entirely dissolved, added the salt and vinegar, and put a part of it in the mold to chill on its own. Meanwhile, I started chilling the rest of the gelatin to prepare to whip it. 

 

When it was ever so slightly thickened, I whipped it, and here I discovered something novel: normally I wait until the gelatin is a little thicker before I whip it, and it seems to take forever. Here I started whipping when it was just showing the slightest signs of coagulation, and it whipped up very fast, and furthermore it held the airiness as it continued to chill. Now I know.

Once the remaining gelatin was whipped, I folded in the potato salad and cucumber, then I arranged the pimiento on top of the clear gelatin in the mold and then added the whipped gelatin salad mixture. I decided to whip out my new tall mold for this job, but the entire salad still didn't fit, so I had to fill up another mold (pictured above) besides that one.

This wasn't intentional, but the top of this mold looks like orange sections, which works really well with the orange juice gelatin. The effect of the arranged vegetables would have worked better with a clear gelatin, sure, but frankly, I knew that orange Jell-O would be far too potent to work well with potato salad, and I think history has vindicated my actions.

I do love how gloriously tall this mold is. It truly feels like a sculptural, art-deco way to make food. The fluffy whipped portion of the salad just looks like...potato salad. Fortunately it doesn't taste too orange-y either. The whipped gelatin texture actually works really well with potato salad, too--it almost makes me wish that the recipe would have you blend your potato salad and then whip it together with the gelatin. I know that sounds strange, but the primary textural problem with this salad is the inconsistency of potato salad within the gelatin. As you fold it in, you can't get it evenly distributed (believe me, I tried), but if you blended/processed and whipped it, you'd get all of the flavor in there with a more uniform fluffy texture. Next time, I suppose.

A uniform texture would also make the mold slice more cleanly, of course. But more than that, I wanted to show you this photo as an illustration of what I consider to be a major issue with this mold: that top clear layer is much denser and heavier than the whipped gelatin below, which causes it to collapse in on itself when the mold is cut.

Perhaps this wouldn't be much of a problem if you used a shallow, wide mold (like a ring mold), but it's killer with this tall narrow mold. In the future, I would put the whipped layer on top and the clear layer on the bottom, with the pimiento arranged on the very bottom so it would be revealed like a surprise upon serving. I would also probably make a larger clear layer to make that look a little nicer.

This is really one of the better savory Jell-O recipes I've had in terms of taste, though. The bottom layer just tastes like foamy potato salad, and the top layer, while it is sweet despite the salt and vinegar, doesn't clash with the potato salad taste at all. Maybe it helps that the potato salad I used was somewhat sweet to begin with. This might be a different story with a strongly mustard-forward salad. The cucumber is a must, though. It adds a fresh crunch that works really well with everything else.

As weird as it sounds, Party Potato Salad would make a perfectly presentable picnic or backyard barbecue addition. If I were to make it again, I would make the structural modifications enumerated above, and if I wanted to add green pepper, I would add it in a dice and not in rings to improve ease of slicing, but other than that I wouldn't change anything about how I made it. I know if you're reading this and new to the blog, you probably think I'm far too cavalier about making potato salad--with fruity gelatin mixed in. Well, I'm nearing five years of service exploring the wacky world of 1960s Jell-O, and I suppose that it's hardened me. Not much can surprise me anymore. I guess that has made me a little more open-minded towards this only-mildly-weird combination of fruit flavors and random other ingredients. So congrats to General Foods for not going too off the deep end with this one!

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #128: Cauliflower Radish Salad

Howdy, Jigglers! Apart from being very busy with a new job and traveling over the holidays, one of the reasons I haven't posted much this winter is that I was at the end of a list of five Jell-O recipes that my husband picked out for me to make next, and Cauliflower Radish Salad was the last on the list. I love cauliflower, but radishes can be a little tough to like for me. I like them thinly sliced as a garnish (e.g. on mole tacos or a grain and kale salad), but I never make them the star of the show.

Then last weekend I got a new Jell-O mold at the thrift store, so I had to face the music and make this in order to get any more Jell-O recipes on my list. I figured I needed a vegetable side for my lunches anyway, so here goes nothing.

As celery salad Jell-O hasn't been available for over half a century now, of course I knew I was going to have to make some alterations to the recipe. For the gelatin itself, I used my standard unflavored gelatin powder mixed with celery salt, onion powder, and garlic powder. I also subbed in red wine vinegar for the white vinegar called for. How well did this work? Well, spoiler alert: I'm going to suggest some further alterations down below, but you're just going to have to wait to find out what they are.

As for the rest of the recipe, I omitted the grated onion and salt but followed the rest of the recipe to a T. Stirring in the ice cubes made the gelatin set very fast--in fact a little too fast, and so I had to add a little hot water to get it to be fluid enough for enough time to mix in the vegetables. Somehow in all this tumult, I did remember to reduce the quantity of each vegetable by roughly half to get a visually appealing mold. As per usual, they vastly overstate the amount you need (or vastly understate how much gelatin mixture you need).

Once I managed to get the veggies in, though, this set up in a flash and I had myself...a cauliflower radish celery Jell-O salad. Joy. It tastes...like celery-infused snot with the vegetables in it. I'm not a fan. The cauliflower is fine, but the taste of radish just needs to be offset by something stronger and tastier. I wish I would have put worscestershire sauce in it, or A1 sauce, or something to amplify the flavor a little bit above just celery.

It was, however, edible, and I did finish all of it. By the end, though, I had a few thoughts on how to fix this clunker of a Jell-O salad:

1. add chicken stock

2. add worcestershire sauce

3. add olives and diced jalapeno peppers

MAYBE that would be an acceptable picnic mold. Maybe. This was a hurdle that General Foods put in my path, so I had to overcome it, but let's face it: it wasn't enjoyable. At least now I get to go on to bigger and better things.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #170: Marzipan

Howdy, Jigglers! Providence led me to make today's Jell-O recipe. You see, this photo has always caught my eye when I peruse JOJ (which I often do):

And I do love marzipan: I love almond flavor, I love my desserts to have fun shapes and colors, and, of course, I love this Marzipan. The only thing that's held me back from making this recipe is that blanching and grating almonds doesn't sound fun at all, and I've always had my doubts about how well it would even work, since marzipan should have a very finely ground texture.

Over the holidays, however, I happened to be in a foreign foods store and find a couple of packages of premade marzipan, so of course I picked them up specifically to shove Jell-O into them. In my version of this recipe, then, all I use is commerically prepared marzipan and the Jell-O powder of your choice. Since I wanted to make the maximum number of distinct fruits possible with just one color, I got lemon Jell-O so I could make lemons and bananas.

The method for this recipe (the way I made it, anyhow) is probably the simplest of any I've ever made: squish up the marzipan in a bowl with the Jell-O powder until well combined (for two tubes of marzipan, I used an entire 3 oz envelope), then shape into the fruits or other shapes of your choice.

My sculpting abilities are obviously not the best, but you can sort of tell what they're supposed to be. As the recipe indicates, decorative finishing touches can be added to these fruits through painting food coloring on them (which is well beyond the scope of my abilities) or adding angelica or cloves for stems and such. Since I had them, I added some cloves to some of these. Note: this did impart a slight clove-y flavor to these pieces of marzipan, so if you're not a fan, find angelica, whatever that is.

If you are the kind of detail-oriented person who can decorate cookies, this marzipan recipe would be perfect for garnishing a cake or a fruit tray. I especially love how the pears and cherries look, and I bet oranges would look fantastic too. These are quite tasty, as well; this was another reason I chose lemon Jell-O, as I figured if that tart flavor would go well with the normal marzipan flavor, then any other Jell-O flavor would be fine. Sure enough, the lemon doesn't taste bad at all. The marzipan is quite sweet on its own, so the tartness of the lemon flavor isn't overwhelming. I imagine the cherry flavor would be particularly good for this, though.

All in all, this recipe works surprisingly well (with commercial marzipan, at least), and I admire General Foods's pluck and imagination for developing this charming version of an old-fashioned classic, but now with Jell-O.