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.
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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.
