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.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #88: Orange Ginger Whip

Howdy, Jigglers! I decided to make the Orange Ginger Whip upon randomly turning to a page in JOJ and discovering how few ingredients this recipe called for. For the price of a few oranges and some ginger ale, you can make a bold whipped Jell-O recipe!

 

This recipe is pretty easy to make: heat gelatin in ginger ale, add orange juice, chill slightly, and then whip to a bubbly, fluffy state with a hand mixer. You then pour it into a mold and let set completely before unmolding.

 

I changed just one part of this recipe: instead of orange Jell-O, I used a combination of unflavored gelatin and orange zest to flavor the Orange Ginger Whip. My recommendation is to use the zest of one orange, being careful not to include any pith, which imparts a bitter flavor, and to add a tablespoon of sugar to the ginger ale as it heats. I did not do this and ended up needing to sweeten the whip with some drizzled honey (which is not bad, if you prefer to do it that way). If you would rather top this mold with whipped cream, as mentioned in the recipe, I would suggest you include a fair amount of powdered sugar in the cream.

 

I like how this mold is whipped but doesn't contain cream. Normally the whipped recipes contain some kind of dairy, but this one has the bubbles incorporated without being creamy, and that has a novel effect. You don't taste much of the ginger ale, so it mostly just tastes like oranges, but that's a fine way to taste.

 

A note for those used to whipping creamy Jell-O: this will probably not whip up to the same volume as you are accustomed to. That's okay. It will still be fluffy. Just whip it as much as you can and don't be anxious about it like I was.

Now, the most mysterious part of this recipe is the claim that it has "many uses." I have no earthly idea of what those uses could be. This recipe is in the Two-Way Salads part of the book, though it seems really out of place there. It is just a fruity dessert, and there aren't even any savory-leaning garnishes mentioned. I don't think this would work atop salad greens, but I can't think of many uses it would have in the confectionery world either. Perhaps you could coat small cakes in it instead of an icing (a la petit fours) or use it as a filling in between layers of angel food cake or something, but other than that I am seriously struggling to think of any use this could have outside of just eating it by itself. We might always have to wonder what General Foods was referring to there.

Despite the unsolved case of its recipe's description, Orange Ginger Whip is an easy, cheap, and fine-tasting Jell-O recipe that would be a welcome addition at any spring or summer gathering for its unique texture and burst of citrus flavor. Just don't kid yourself and try to serve it as an actual salad, as General Foods implies you can. It has soda in it, after all.

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #153: Ring Around the Tuna

Howdy, Jigglers! Today's recipe is one of the most ominously named in the entirety of JOJ: Ring Around the Tuna. Nothing sounds more like a match made in Jell-O heaven than "Ring Around the Tuna," right? This savory mold is made with lemon or lime Jell-O, grated onion, cucumber, celery, olives, pimento, and tuna coagulated together, to be served with lettuce and perhaps mayonnaise.

 

Now, of course, in my neverending quest to make the platonic ideal form of each JOJ recipe, I made a couple of adjustments here. I swapped out lemon Jell-O for unflavored gelatin with lemon juice and lemon zest (I recommend the juice of 1.5 lemons and the zest of 1), I omitted the grated onion (sue me!), and I didn't incorporate the tuna into the gelatin itself. That just seemed...wrong. In all the years I've had this book, I always looked at this recipe and figured that the tuna goes in the middle of the mold, as in the Ring mold goes Around The Tuna, for some reason, and I didn't want to change that notion when I made it. In fact, I always imagined that General Foods originally styled the photo for this recipe with a pile of tuna in the middle of the ring mold, but it turned out so horrific-looking that they had to cover it with curly endive to make it even vaguely presentable.

 

The other change I made was to halve the amount of the celery and cucumber, because, as I've explained many times before in these recipes, the amount of chunky ingredients seems wildly out of proportion to the quantity of gelatin called for, leading to misshapen molds that don't look smooth or even transparent enough to make out what's in them. If you want to feed Ring Around the Tuna to a crowd (and God bless you if you do), I highly recommend doubling the amount of water, gelatin, and juice/zest to accomodate all that greenery. In my case, I just wanted to make four lunch salads, so I opted to halve those bulky ingredients to get a better-looking mold.

 

Somehow, after all this time, I still don't have a non-Bundt-pan large ring mold, so I put it in this old-style mold that I call the jellyfish mold. This sort of proves my point about the proportions of this recipe, in that this thing is not going to even come close to filling up a large ring mold unless you at least double if not triple the recipe, in which case I still recommend using half the quantity of vegetables that the doubled or tripled recipe gives you for aesthetics and ease of cutting.

The method in this recipe is that of any basic Jell-O salad: you heat the gelatin in water (in my case I let it bloom on the water first, then heat only until dissolved to avoid getting gelatin stuck to your pot and thus not acting upon the recipe as you'd hope), you add cold liquid, you let it chill until slighly thickened, then you add the solids and place the whole kit and kaboodle into an oiled mold and chill until completely set. You then unmold.

 

So how did it go? 

 

Remember how I mentioned earlier that I recommend flavoring this recipe with the juice of one-and-a-half lemons and the zest of one? Well, that's because I used the juice of three lemons and the zest of two, and it was a little much. In fact, it was so acidic that my stomach hurt a little after eating my first salad with it, consisting of half a can of tuna, a quarter of this mold, and some romaine lettuce. In subsequent servings I remedied this by applying a generous quantity of mayonnaise, which makes it more palatable. However, the intense lemon flavor does drown out a lot of the celery, cucumber, and olive flavors in the mold, hence my recommendation.

 

Due to my lack of a suitable ring mold, this is more like a Slice Beside the Tuna, but the idea is the same. Also, a side note: this recipe has never been and never will be fancy enough to warrant curly endive and radish roses. Sorry.

 

Other than my goof with the amount of lemon juice I forced into this poor gelatin mold, I like it pretty well. The flavors do suit tuna, and the salad, even with mayo added, is fairly light and healthy while being filling enough to sustain me in my job, which is fairly active. It's definitely low carb and gets those veggies and Vitamin C in.

 

All in all, this is not as bad as you'd think, although I would not serve it to any but the most experienced Jell-O enthusiasts. I don't know why or how it was dreamt up, but I guess I'm glad it was, which is more than I expected to say about this. So, good job, General Foods...?

The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #22: Crown Jewel Dessert

Howdy, Jigglers! Last month I had a big old BBQ party, and of course I wanted to make a Jell-O dessert (as opposed to a Jell-O seafood salad or something) for my guests. Fortunately one of the prettiest dessert recipes from JOJ was still on my list of to-makes: Crown Jewel Dessert. It is comprised of cubes of clear Jell-O suspended in a gelatin-y matrix of pineapple juice mixed with whipped cream, Dream Whip, or even cream cheese and milk (more on that later).

As you can see, there are several variations on this dessert, but I knew I wanted to make a mold-based one since I knew someone was bringing pie to the party already. However, the cheese variation seriously caught my eye, so I decided to combine them. Since we were already fully immersed in autumn, I decided to base my color scheme for this stained-glass Jell-O mold on that and went with cherry, orange, and lemon gelatins.

So first, a day ahead of time, I made the three clear Jell-Os as specified on the package (except I added two teaspoons of unflavored gelatin, and I always allow the gelatin to bloom in room-temperature water [the "boiling" water] and then heat and stir it until dissolved, and then add the cold water) and allowed them to set in square dishes so they could be cut into cubes later

The next day, I cut these Jell-Os into 1-inch cubes and set to work on the white part of the recipe. I then dissolved unflavored gelatin into some pineapple nectar, and heated it. Meanwhile, I had let cream cheese come to room temperature and mixed it with about 1/4 of a cup of milk. Then I added the pineapple gelatin mixture into the cheese mixture and beat it until well combined.

 

 

After that, I poured the pineapple mixture into two molds, then I placed some of the gelatin cubes into the cheese mixture in each mold. I had plenty of cubes left over, by the way.

As mentioned, I made this dish in two molds, but if you have a very large mold, you can probably get it into one.

The smaller melon-shaped mold didn't turn out the best because the mixture was already a little thickened by the time I got it into the molds, but oh well.

So for once, I actually did serve this dessert to guests, who all approved of it. It doesn't taste as autumnal as it looks (go figure), but it was fruity and creamy for sure. The pineapple flavor in the dish is not strong, but it's still a nice combination. If I made this again, I would perhaps exchange the cream cheese for coconut milk to make a pina colada flavor, particularly if I were only going to use tropical-flavored Jell-Os for the cubes (think lime, pineapple, orange).

All told, Crown Jewel Dessert is an infinitely customizeable, perfectly tasty, and very impressive-looking Jell-O recipe that I highly recommend for your next potluck or get together. So thanks, General Foods, for a normal dessert recipe for once!

Heirloom Recipes #1: Strawberry Jell-O Cake

 Howdy, Jigglers! Today I'm starting a new series on the blog of old family Jell-O recipes, whether they're from my family or from someone I know. It seems like I have accumulated quite a few of these over the past six months or so, so I figured it's time to start sprinkling these into the Jell-O rotation (not that I don't love the upcoming JOJ recipes for my blogging efforts, like Ring Around the Tuna) for some variety.

To inaugurate the series, I am making a recipe that my mom apparently used to make a lot back in the good old days before I came around: Strawberry Jell-O Cake! No, it's not a cake. But it does have strawberry Jell-O, though. It is a nutty strawberry-banana fruit mixture in two layers of strawberry Jell-O with a layer of Cool Whip in between. For a less sweet variation, I have seen this same basic recipe posted around the Internets with straight sour cream in between the two gelatin layers instead of Cool Whip, but of course I wanted to try the recipe as written.

Now, since it was written in the 70s, package sizes and presentations of the various ingredients have changed between then and now, but you get enough to go on, certainly. What my mom left (perhaps intentionally) vague is how to mix all the ingredients together. I guess you could mix everything together in one layer, but research into similar Jell-O salads reveal that most people layer them.

The method for this Jell-O madness is simple and straightforward: mix your Jell-O and boiling water, cool until very thick, mix in the rest of the ingredients (I separated the gelatin into halves before mixing in the frozen strawberries so my top layer wouldn't set too soon), pour half into the pan, let set, put Cool Whip over it, then repeat the process for the first layer for the second one. I was planning on making a layer of half of my Cool Whip in the middle and then putting the rest on top, as my mom indicates in the recipe, but half the tub wasn't nearly enough Cool Whip to make a satisfactory or even noticeable layer in the middle, so I just spread it all on there. Even with all the Cool Whip spread on the first layer, I didn't feel like I had enough creamy goodness, so I spread on a little plain yogurt on top of it. If you really want Cool Whip on top, get two tubs.

The Jell-O layers turned out very chunky, but it just shows how bursting with fruit they are! 

The little sprinkly bits in the gelatin are the pecans--we could only find pecan bits and not chopped or halved or whole pecans, or else I would've made those a little chunkier too. 

I was pleased with the adherence of the Jell-O to the Cool Whip, since each slice of this "cake" held together pretty well.

 

 

Now that's a satisfactory and noticeable Cool Whip layer. This cake reminds me a lot of the Austrian and Peruvian flags. For all my Austrian and Peruvian readers out there, this would be a great dessert for any of your national holidays.

I know I always talking about serving Jell-O dishes at luncheons, but this time I really did serve the Strawberry Jell-O Cake at a luncheon with some friends and their kids, and everybody finished their servings, plus I even sent some second servings home with them. It was very tasty and cool on a toasty day, and the fruitiness of it mixed with all the creaminess in the center was delightful.

It was slightly concerning to see how much cake this recipe made considering the quantity of bananas in them, but the gelatin kept the nanners perfectly preserved for three or four days, so you've got time to finish this beast off, but I do recommend either serving it to a group or making it for a larger family or halving the recipe if you're not sure you can finish it right away.

If you're reading this, Mom, congrats! Your recipe got rave reviews! Even though I don't remember having eaten this as a kid, it still brings back that 70s nostalgia. I can taste the Watergate salad now (stay tuned...)