It’s that time of year again…time to…okay well I guess I make gelatin many times a year. For this round, I thought about challenging myself with tricky dishes I had avoided in the past. Why? I guess to suffer.
I thought to start with something easy – remaking a Red, White, and Blue mold for the 4th of July, with some slight changes. The challenge part was meant to be attempting the advanced technique for artfully laying fruit in a layer.
Description of ‘special design’ technique from The New Joys of Jell-o (1973)
The actual placing of strawberry slices is really the easiest part. Getting very neat slices out of whatever berries you have on hand is…a challenge. Making things worse, I forgot that fruit tends to float in gelatin, so I overpoured a bit when I went to finish up. (I went with the Expert way listed above, and it really is just a few spoonfuls of tolerance to set the design without it floating away on you.) But really, this part was whatever compared to the horrors to come.
I tried. Well, not photo-editing wise. You’re getting raws for this.
My first mistake was placing my unmolding hopes on a thick glass star-shaped dish. I think I have successfully unmolded something from this dish before, but not this day. When I made this recipe originally, I used a big flexible plastic ring mold, which would have been a better way to go.
The dish in question. You can see my star-shaped strawberry slice design, which I think was decently ‘aesthetic’.
Even worse, I altered the white layer of the mold to match a recipe my parents prefer, replacing the melted ice cream with melted marshmallows, cream cheese, and pineapple juice. How is that worse? Well, I’ve never tried to unmold that layered recipe, instead cutting and serving it in squares. Even then, I had some separation issues, where the top layer unglued itself from the white layer. At the time, I chalked this up to waiting too long between pouring my layers, and made a note to be quicker this time around.
A rare behind-the-scenes photo (my kitchen is…ill-suited for photos) before disaster struck
To no avail. Not only could I not successfully unmold my star-spangled mold, during one of my attempts the bottom two layers separated from the top, and not cleanly either. Extra frustrating given I had thoroughly greased my molds, anticipating this very problem. I thought about attempting to unmold my larger rectangular set, but it too, was in a thick glass pan, my nephew wanted me to help him with his video game, and I was tired.
I really tried…well not with the photo backdrop. Again, I knew I wasn’t getting any decent photos out of this. Behold my SyncMaster 213T.
Anyways, it’s fine that I failed this first challenge. Not the best start, but perhaps a needed reset of my expectations for the rest of the month. Here’s what I learned:
First, artfully setting cut fruit into a mold is a total pain for various reasons, and I am not sure it’s really worth it. The last time I made this, I just dumped a bunch of macerated strawberries into the Red layer, and it still looked pretty good.
My original attempt, which…yeah no wonder I wanted a second try. Garnish is good, tho.
Second, I feel I’ve confirmed that this cream cheese/marshmallow layer is not ideal for unmolding. I was very careful to pour it at the optimal time, and still ended up with problems. If I needed to make this again and unmold it, I would stick to the original melted ice cream.
You can see it behaves quite differently from the uneven boundary with the blue layer
Which brings me to my third and final lesson: this shouldn’t have been unmolded anyway. Why? Well, normal people would be out and about for the holiday, and a big unmolded dessert, while impressive, is terrible to transport. I should have stuck with my clear star dish, but reversed the layers to have the strawberries on top, and let it be.
A day where I was apparently good at slicing strawberries- no wait, these were garden strawberries. Much easier than the giant supermarket ones.
Anyways, you have enough stuff to worry about during a holiday. Why add cleanly unmolding a layered gelatin dessert to your list?
Well, not the auspicious start I was hoping for, but oh well. I also learned that if you fail to unmold your big dessert for the big day, your guests will take it upon themselves to console you about how “it will still taste good!” or offer to help…while you try not to snap at them about how that doesn’t solve your need for aesthetic photos for social media, haha.
What’s next? I thought I’d use a “C” theme, which means I’ll be attempting a chaud-froid, a cold souffle, and a charlotte russe (sans ladyfingers). But not necessarily in that order. You’ll have to wait to find out on the next edition of Jelly July: Challenge!
kelp 