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.

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...?