The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #141: Coollime Salad

Howdy Jigglers! Today we are going to discuss the Coollime Salad, perhaps one of the most dreaded recipes of this whole project. I honestly just made it because it featured several inexpensive ingredients that I needed for other dishes, plus I wanted to get it over with.

When I was looking over the recipe before making it, I just buckled down and decided that it had to be done straight. There were no alterations that I could make that would in any substantial way improve what I was about to produce. The only possible modification was using lime juice, one drop of green food coloring, and unflavored gelatin in place of lime Jell-O to avoid the sugary vinegar taste, which I did. I don't know why they couldn't have used the celery-flavored Jell-O for this since they were promoting it so much at the time, but that question has been relegated to the ages.

Since I had them on hand, and since this recipe already has a green-and-pink vibe to it, I decided to use home-fermented pickled red onions in place of raw onions, as I still cannot get over the idea of raw onion in a Jell-O salad.

Other than those two minor changes, I made the recipe as written. It came out smelling awful, but looking...pretty decent. Like something that would adorn a tastefully arranged Easter table.

Now, the taste of this salad is different. It has a lot of competing elements to it: the spice of horseradish, radishes, and paprika, with the creaminess of cream cheese and milk, the tartness of lime and vinegar, and the crunch of the vegetables. All told the flavor is FAR better than what I was expecting. I was anticipating having to force myself to eat it, in fact, but I enjoyed it as a side at lunch each day. It is primarily sour and salty, but each component gives enough contrast to form a nice, refreshing whole. The horseradish in the mix was especially good: this might be my favorite application of horseradish outside of big, meaty roast beef sandwiches. 

If I had to compare the Coollime Salad to something, it's sort of like a slippery-smooth German potato salad with plenty of mustard, but creamier.

What does strike me as particularly odd about eating it is that, unlike some of these excuses for salads like the Banana-Peanut Salad (which is a salad in name only because of how much fruit and sugar is in it), this salad is mostly dairy, which is a phenomenon I've never encountered in a salad before. But it's true. The buttermilk and the cottage cheese form probably 60-70% of this entire salad, and it feels like there is a paltry quantity of vegetables included, even though I did add a little extra celery since I had chopped up too much. Really, though--that's probably the only thing I would change about this recipe: double the amount of radishes, celery, and onion (if using pickled onions), or add half a cup of little cucumber sticks, as hinted at in the recipe notes. That would make it feel more justifiable as a salad, and plus, if you use a Bundt pan as a mold like I did, the additional bulk would help create a more impressively statured salad. Otherwise, the salad is pretty nice as it is.

As with so many Jell-O recipes, I have a few notes on serving the Coollime Salad, should you ever decide to take my word for how palatable it is. Firstly, though the recipe does not mention it, I do recommend serving slices of the salad on top of lettuce, especially a mild lettuce like iceberg, Romaine, or Bibb. This would help moderate the pungency of the tart elements of the salad, making it more pleasing to more palates. 

Secondly, I recommend serving this for a luncheon among friends, family get-together, church picnic, or any other event where you need a cool vegetable side dish for a large group. Though this recipe keeps very well (mine stayed perfectly good for an entire week in the refrigerator), the color of the radishes and onions (again, if using red onions) bleeds heavily into the gelatin matrix. Unless you are going for a tie-dye aesthetic, the salad looks prettier within a day and a half of unmolding it for this reason.

The Coollime Salad was a refreshingly edible Jell-O creation, and it gave me renewed confidence to tackle some of the other questionable recipes in my Joys of Jell-O journey. So thanks, General Foods, for at least making a nominal effort to prove that you all didn't go completely off the deep end trying to fill up this book.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #104: Banana Peanut Salad

Howdy Jigglers! Today I bring you a recipe that was easily on my top 10 list of scariest recipes from The Joys of Jell-O: The Banana Peanut Salad. Replete with mayonnaise, layering gelatin, and yes, honest-to-goodness roasted salted peanuts, this recipe had just about everything that is difficult about making retro Jell-O. Yet, as so often happens, I chose to make this recipe because the few necessary ingredients are super cheap and easy to find, which at least gave me some confidence as I knew it wouldn't be a tragic waste of money if it turned out as horrible as it sounded.

If anyone out there has any idea, I need to know: how did they come up with this?

Given that there is already so much going on with this recipe, and especially given that banana can be a challenging flavor to match and pair, I decided to go with boxed Jell-O for this occasion, specifically the strawberry-banana flavor. I don't know about you, but I cannot imagine much that is less appetizing than lime or orange and peanuts. So for once I made this recipe exactly as written.

It is a good idea to serve this in individual molds as indicated in the recipe since peanuts don't slice that easily, but using my particular individual ring molds was the only part of this recipe that wasn't dead simple. It took quite a bit of chopping to get the banana pieces small enough to fit in the molds, which of course makes oxidation more of an issue. However, I chopped the banana immediately prior to dunking it in the clear gelatin, minimizing this problem.

Unless you want to be a perfectionist and break out a blender or whisk for this dish, there will be a few globs of mayo that don't mix in well with the reserved gelatin. Take heart, though--it won't impact the final look or taste of this dessert whatsoever. Yes, this recipe is in the "Two-Way Salads" chapter. No, I won't dignify that travesty by calling it a salad. This is obviously just a dessert recipe, albeit a strange one.

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, the photos in this post are all from my phone. My sincerest apologies.


To be utterly honest, this dish doesn't look great. The nearly fluorescent red and pink gelatin makes the chunks held within seem a little less benign, and strawberry-banana Jell-O stinks when it's cooking and setting, so I started off with a very bad feeling about how the taste would turn out. To my total surprise, this tastes...fine. Good, even. It's sweet, but the peanuts add a savory, crunchy contrast that actually works, and the mayonnaise further tempers the saccharine nature of the Jell-O. The strawberry-banana flavor wasn't even too overpowering or artificial-tasting. I was shocked, but pleasantly shocked. 

I still can't imagine this in one of the citrusy variations, though.

 There's just one warning I have to make about the Banana Peanut Salad for those who wish to try it: despite gelatin's amazing preservative powers, the banana will start to oxidize around the edges and the peanuts will become slightly soggy after roughly a day and a half after making the recipe. I strongly recommend consuming the entire recipe's worth of gelatin either the day it's made or, at most, by the following day. This does create a slight paradox, though: this recipe is one of the most important ones to serve to a sizeable group of people all at once, yet it is one of the recipes that would be most difficult to convince a sizeable group of people to eat all at once. How you reconcile this conundrum is beyond the scope of this post, but I thought it needed to be said regardless.

Despite having enjoyed this "salad," I could not tell you what its most appropriate setting or manner of serving would be, except perhaps to say that this is a dessert that will easily make six servings for under $5 of ingredients if you already have mayonnaise on hand, which is not an unimportant merit. If for no other reason, I give General Foods kudos for creating a "salad" that tastes alright on a very tight budget.
 
As a hint of what's to come, the next recipe I do will be one that might be even stranger than the Banana Peanut Salad.

 

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #102: De Luxe Cheese Mold

Howdy, Jigglers! To continue our cheesy Jell-O marathon we have the De Luxe Cheese Mold. Before we begin, can I just say that I love spelling "deluxe" out as two words and capitalizing both of them? It makes you feel like you're hanging out with the Rat Pack just reading it.

Anyhow, the De Luxe Cheese Mold is deceptively not that cheesy. It is mostly fruit flavoring in the form of canned pineapple and sherbet with a sprinkle of cottage cheese included for filling power, a savory contrast, and so that General Foods could class this recipe as a "Two-Way Salad." If we are being totally honest, though, this is a fruit salad-type dessert.

Tragically, there is seemingly not a single pint of orange sherbet in a 100-mile radius of where I live, so I used lime sherbet. To replace the Orange-Pineapple Jell-O, I used one cup of orange juice in place of the boiling water, the syrup from the canned pineapple, and unflavored gelatin. I also used separate cottage cheese and pineapple, since a mixture of the two also does not seem to be available in my area. So I ended up with a mixed citrus gelatin salad. Other than those changes, though, I made the recipe as written.

When it was done, I ended up with a one-quart mold of gelatin plus an extra quarter cup. I used my nice fish mold for it to see how well it would conform to its shape, and I was pleasantly surprised by this relatively chunky recipe.

I was terrified that, considering the mixture of lime sherbet and orange juice, the gelatin would turn out an unappetizing beige color, but fortunately the power of food coloring prevailed and it turned out just plain green. In terms of taste, it is very reminiscent of the classic lime Jell-O salad with cottage cheese, pineapple, pecans, and sweetened condensed milk, only sans nuts and more spongy instead of creamy. Even without the additional sugar that actual Jell-O would provide, it was still plenty sweet, too.

 

 
In general the taste of the De Luxe Cheese mold was nice. It's fruity and tropical, and the cheese is nice in it, which I wasn't really expecting. I certainly couldn't imagine eating it on lettuce, though. If simply reading the recipe didn't convince you that this recipe is a total cop-out of a salad, I can confirm by having tasted it: it is just a cop-out of a salad. But if you need a somewhat lighter fruity gelatin salad than usual, this will definitely fit the bill.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #45: Cherry Cheese Charmer

Howdy, Jigglers! This next recipe was chosen for me to make by my brother in law, who came to visit the other week and loves cherries. He never has mentioned that cherry is his favorite fruit flavor, but every time I ask what kind of dessert he wants me to make when he comes over, it is invariably cherry-rich, which works just fine for me. I was actually thankful to have somebody else around to choose a vintage Jell-O recipe for me, since if I were choosing for myself, I probably would have chosen something a little more daring and less promising.

Anyhow, this recipe is a combination of some of my favorite Jell-O techniques: whipped gelatin, dessert gelatin with just a hint of savory flavor, and fruit mixed in to fluffy gelatin. That said, I did have to make a couple of changes to the recipe. 

After the Coca Cola gelatin and the Cherry Charlotte Russe, I had had about enough of dark sweet cherries in gelatin. They always make the gelatin a brownish color, and their flavor is a little insipidly sweet and flat for me. So I replaced the can of dark sweet cherries with one can of cherry pie filling and one small jar of maraschino cherries. For the cherry syrup, I used the juice from the maraschino cherries, and I heated up the pie filling and added a quarter of a cup of water to it to get the syrup to separate from the fruit.

Then I made my usual substitution of two tablespoons of unflavored gelatin for the Jell-O, and the rest of the recipe I made as written.

Though I am sure the optional layering method would be attractive, I didn't want to make this recipe any more complicated than was necessary, so I didn't take that route. The method has a few steps, but it was easy enough to do. It took a bit of time to blend the cream cheese and the gelatin, it takes quite a few minutes to whip the gelatin sufficiently, and you have to watch carefully to make sure the gelatin doesn't set too much before whipping, but as long as you are patient and diligent about it, it's pretty simple. It also fit just about perfectly into my preferred mold.

The result? Fluffy. Rich. Attractive. And so pink! Just take a look.

I had maybe a quarter cup of gelatin leftover after filling my mold, just for your information. I was quite pleased, by the way, with how well this whipped mixture took the shape of the mold. Also pleasant was the degree to which the syrup from the cherries flavored the gelatin. It's always a challenge to substitute the flavoring provided by Jell-O in a way that is neither too weak or too strong, but this combination of maraschino cherry juice and cherry pie filling syrup worked terrifically.

As you can see, the cream cheese didn't blend totally seamlessly into the gelatin, but this  didn't result in weird chunks of pure cream cheese or anything, so I didn't mind whatsoever. My brother in law's reaction was also very positive.

The blurb about the recipe in the book is quite appropriate--this is a special recipe that certainly charmed me. In fact, it would be a great, somewhat lighter-than-usual Valentine's Day treat. I rate it as an excellent addition to the Joys of Jell-O anthology, though of course with the caveat that it would probably not be nearly as good with dark sweet cherries.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #1: Hawaiian Dessert

Howdy, Jigglers! At long last I was able to return to the very first recipe in Joys of Jell-O: Hawaiian Dessert. I was planning to do the first recipe first, as I did all the other recipes in numerical order for a good while when I was starting this adventure, but I skipped it due to not having a blender. Now I have a very nice blender, so that and having a leftover can of pineapple finally convinced me that it was time for recipe #1.

When it says that this dish is ready to serve quickly, they aren't kidding. I made the recipe as written, only substituting unflavored gelatin and the juice of one lime for lime Jell-O. If I made this again, though, I would definitely add a tablespoon or two of sugar. It was dead simple to make, but I was in for a big surprise when I tried to extricate the gelatin from the blender: due to the ice and efficient blending, the gelatin was already completely set once the blender turned off, so when I tried pouring it out of the blender, absolutely nothing came out. After a couple of moments of disbelief, I had to scoop the stuff out, and then it was ready to serve. I refrigerated it anyway, but it did not set up further.

Do you see how this dessert looks a little like shredded, wet insulation? Well, that's sort of what it tastes like. It is tart-sweet, but the overwhelming impression it gives you is chunky. Even when judiciously blended, pineapple stays slightly fibrous and, well, just chunky, and the gelatin keeps the whole mixture solid, which strongly reminded me of insulation for some reason, like if you flavored and moistened that fluffy stuff in your walls then ate it.

That resemblance aside, this dish isn't bad--it's just not very good, either. I like the flavor combination of pineapple, lime, milk, and almond, but the texture is so offputting that I couldn't truly enjoy it.

The appearance of the Hawaiian Dessert is a bit strange, too. Since it set up immediately upon being blended, I had no choice but to pile it up in glasses, which does make it look fluffy, I guess, but it certainly doesn't have the sleek, clean look of most gelatin.

If you want some tropical flavor and need a gelatin dessert FAST, I recommend the Hawaiian Dessert, except I think it would be better with a little extra sugar and some coconut milk in place of dairy milk, or at least half-and-half for more creaminess. However, this recipe is one of the lowest on the list of gelatin dishes that I would make again. The flavors just aren't enough to overcome the texture. Sorry, General Foods.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #37: Cherry Charlotte Russe

Howdy, Jigglers! After making the Tuna Salad, I was ready for a dessert gelatin recipe again, and in particular one featuring ladyfingers, since I had a package of ladyfingers lying around and ladyfingers + Jell-O is always a wonderful combination. It's like a cheater's sponge cake. In the end I chose Cherry Charlotte Russe, a creamy, fruity dish studded with nuts and served in individual serving dishes.

The ingredients for this dish were fairly easy to replicate in a healthier fashion. I left the ladyfingers, whipped cream, and pecans exactly as they were, but instead of cherry Jell-O, I used unflavored gelatin in pureed cherries and two tablespoons of sugar. For the cherries I bought a bag of frozen cherries, thawed them, and then blended them up in a blender, which worked well and produced enough liquid to make the appropriate amount of gelatin. However, if you use a different type of cherry, your sugar requirements may change--maraschino cherries, for instance, would need no additional sugar, while tart cherries would need much more than a couple of tablespoons.

The method for making this recipe is standard and simple; I bloomed the gelatin in the cherry puree, added sugar, heated it up until very warm to dissolve the gelatin and sugar, refrigerated it in a bowl until slightly thick, whipped the cream in the meantime, folded  the cream and nuts into the gelatin, placed some ladyfingers into my serving dishes, scooped the gelatin mixture into said dishes, then refrigerated it all again.

The only tricky part of making this recipe, and most Jell-O recipes in general, is catching the gelatin at the correct intermediate point of setting. If you want the gelatin to only reach the slightly thickened, very thick, or set but not firm stages, you really have to keep an eye on it, as the time required for it to reach those stages varies depending upon the type of container it's in, its position in your fridge, how concentrated the actual gelatin is, and its temperature at the start of the setting process. But it always seems to me that the more frequently I check on a batch of setting gelatin, the slower it sets, but if I know it's going to take a while and I wait a long while to check it, it winds up too hardened by the time I check. Gelatin that sets too much can always be heated slightly to resoften it, but getting it right can be a little frustrating.

In this case, my gelatin may have been just slightly too soft when I mixed in the cream and pecans because it didn't marble all that attractively, but it still set up fine in the end. 

You can see, roughly, the size of serving dishes I used for all of this creamy goodness, but keep in mind that this recipe makes eleven servings of that size.

The good news is that the Cherry Charlotte Russe is so tasty that you won't have to worry about it going to waste! The cream lightens up the gelatin quite a bit while still being satisfying, and the ladyfingers really make it a special treat with their sweetness.

This dessert would be more than suitable for a spring picnic or family gathering. It feels indulgent, but, at least the way I made it, it's fairly low sugar for a dessert, and it has some real fruit and dairy in it, so it's fairly low guilt, too.

So, once again, thanks to General Foods for coming up with this winner of a recipe.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #167: Tuna Salad

Howdy, Jigglers! Today I bring you one of the JOJ recipes I was looking forward to the least--a category which is almost entirely populated by s e a f o o d. My husband and I had just gotten back from the grocery store one day last week, and I was unpacking a couple of cans of tuna when I unthinkingly asked my husband to pick out the next Jell-O recipe for me to make. He immediately pointed at the tiny can in my hand and said, "I know there are tuna Jell-O recipes. You've got it, so you have to make it happen."

For some reason my camera was not cooperating with me on photographing both the recipe and the actual salad--please bear with my cell phone photos.

We then flipped through JOJ and found Tuna Salad, which conveniently also required several other ingredients I had on hand, like olives, celery, mayonnaise, and onion. I just had to grab a cucumber and I was ready to go. At this juncture my husband also challenged me to eat the entirety of the tuna salad since there have been a few of these recipes (mostly involving tomatoes) that I have been unable to finish due to gagging too much.

I secretly was okay with the idea of the tuna salad because I recently got a fish-shaped mold for a song and was itching to try it out. There was a bit of an obstacle to overcome, though, which was how to replicate the flavor of Celery Flavor Jell-O, which hasn't been manufactured for half a century. After debating pureeing some celery to make celery juice (too much work!), I decided to replace the salt in the recipe with celery salt and call it a day, which worked out fine. Other than using the celery salt and unflavored gelatin in place of Jell-O (a word to the wise: you can find boxes of the salad Jell-O flavors on eBay, but I would certainly recommend against consuming their contents), I followed the recipe exactly, except I accidentally got a lime instead of a lemon.

The recipe was very simple to make. The only problem was that I was worried about the onion. This is the first Jell-O recipe I have made including onion, and I thought if anything was going to make the salad completely inedible, it would be raw onion bits. So I took it really easy when I was adding the onion to avoid overpowering the other flavors.

 I was pleased with how well the chunky salad molded, though it certainly looked less than appetizing on the whole. Regardless, much to my surprise (and perhaps slightly to my husband's chagrin), this salad is simply delicious! It is refreshing, rather light, and not too fishy. Plus, the gelatin works much better than your typical tuna salad at keeping the vegetables crispy, which it did all week long. The hint of lime even shone through on the palate, while the onion did not. Over all, though, I was flabbergasted by how good the olive slices were in completing the dish. I heartily advise against omitting them, as their brininess contrasts beautifully with the creamy gelatin and the other, milder vegetables.

Clearly I had no trouble finishing off the tuna salad after all! This recipe was shockingly good for what it is, and I don't even care for regular tuna salad. I also believe the De Luxe version of the salad sounds good, though I don't know how well gelatin would keep diced apple fresh. This cookbook sure does love tuna with apples, though.

In short, General Foods actually made a competent seafood Jell-O recipe. I don't know if it was brutal amounts of talent or brutal amounts of luck that did it, but I do know that I would make this again someday in a heartbeat, which is the exact opposite of what I was anticipating with Tuna Salad.