This is the point when you confirm there is no alliteration to my challenge choices – just the letter C. Which makes me think, did that Sesame Street segment stick to sounds, or letters? I would look it up, but I gotta catch up, speaking of words that start with C, so.
That Clothing Store is a Dessert?
If you’re a lady my age, you prolly thought of one thing upon hearing “charlotte russe” – a fast fashion store in the mall predating Forever 21 that sold vaguely clubwear-inspired sexy clothes to teens and 20-somethings. At least that’s what I remember of their aesthetic. They recently went bankrupt and closed all their stores, which was one of those pieces of news that I reacted to with “wait, they were still around?”.
Their website is still up, so I guess they transitioned to online-only?
Well, it turns out they were named after a very Specific Dessert. How specific? A charlotte russe is a type of charlotte. Charlottes can vary a lot in terms of ingredients, as is common in what I would call “old-ass desserts”. (How old? Over two hundred years, based on known records.) But the basic idea is you line a tin with strips of cake, ladyfingers, vanilla wafers et cetera, and fill the middle with some sort of fruity creamy concoction. A charlotte russe is defined by the specfic use of a Bavarian cream filling…although even this gets iffy, as “what constitutes a Bavarian cream?” can also vary quite a bit.
Some charlottes from a cursory Youtube search
I actually tried to make a charlotte before for a previous Jelly July, using the same terrible packaged ladyfingers I see in the recipes above. Don’t do this. They’re awful.
I made this in my mini-springform, which meant cutting all those terrible ladyfingers in half
As mentioned in that same blog post, I discovered that by the latter half of the 20th century, American cookbooks stop including recipes for charlottes and instead starting mentioning things like icebox cakes. Even stuff labeled Bavarians gets dicey. When I went to grab an “easy”, “basic” recipe for a Bavarian cream that relied upon flavored gelatin dessert mix, I had a hard time finding one in my 1970’s The New Joys of Jell-o, as there was no Bavarian section in the index. Instead, I found “Strawberry Bavarian Pie” under, you guessed it, Pies, as well as “Honey Pecan Bavarian”, “Layered Bavarian”, “Orange-Pineapple Bavarian”, and “Peach Bavarian” under the incredibly descriptive category of Desserts.
Toss a coin to your indexer, except not whoever did this incredibly phoned-in performance
Add this to the fact that by this time, Jell-o also owned the Dream Whip, and later, Cool Whip, brand, and you have a recipe for disaster Bavarians(?). (Full disclosure, I actually like Cool Whip, but my favorite form is eating it straight out of the freezer. It’s also still technically got dairy in it, which means you can’t use it as a non-dairy substitute.)
A (Charlotte) Russe by Any Other Name
Kelp, the organization of this post is…a challenge to get through, my imaginary reader says? Listen, it’s been hot forever, and then yesterday, when I went to wash my car, it rained. Peak brainmelt. Anyways.
I’m once again trying my hand at a charlotte russe because in yet another Jell-o cookbook, I saw a recipe that didn’t use ladyfingers, but instead ice wafers. While I was familiar with these delicious cookies, I never knew they had a specific name. And it turns out they maybe don’t. See, this particular cookbook is subtly Canadian, and when I searched for ice wafers on online storefronts, I didn’t really get the results I wanted. (How Canadian? It has a recipe for Nanaimo Bars in it.)
Also this
And calling them just ‘wafers’ or ‘sandwich cookies’ isn’t gonna do the job either. Luckily, my resident grocery shopper knew exactly what I was talking about, and managed to secure a package.
This brand I ended up using calls them “vanilla wafers” which isn’t wrong but also…they aren’t…(va)Nilla Wafers…
This is where things once again get complicated. See, there is another recipe in that same book that uses those same stale ladyfingers I’m used to, this time needlessly adding them to frame up a Crown Jewel Dessert.
You know, one of these deals. The one I made was just in a ring mold.
It’s underneath this recipe that they have a very helpful explanation of ladyfingers and ladyfinger-like things…or it would be, if I lived somewhere with a proper bakery…
Today I learned?
All of these can allegedly be found at a normal grocery store. And maybe that was true in Toronto in 1998. But given that the only two types that show up in this cookbook are the two number 3’s, I am suspicious at how reliably even back then one could find the other types at any old supermarket.
Back to the ice-wafer using recipe, which isn’t a charlotte russe, but rather a sort of cheesecake. For some godsforsaken reason, they decided to trim the tops off of the ice wafers, resulting in a weirdly jagged little wafer-henge.
Can you imagine what a nightmare of crumbs preceded this?
I wasn’t going to repeat their mistake, but alas. I only possessed two sizes of springform pans – Smol and Shallow (quantity 3), and Big and Deep. For various reasons, I didn’t want to make a 10″ charlotte russe, but also it turns out one package of ice wafers is one cookie short of a full ring.
Also yes, that’s how easily these suckers crumble into dust. And those mad Canadian lads trimmed them!
So I resigned myself to buying a fifth (5th) springform pan in size Medium, except finding one in stock near me proved extremely difficult. And I had to purchase one sooner rather than later, as it turned out my sister’s extremely energetic kids were set to arrive in mere hours. (I love them, but they are, as parents say, A Handful. And there’s two of them. Two handfuls.)
Anyways. I did manage to track down a 7″ springform within driving distance, line it with ice wafers, whip up a sufficiently firm set strawberry Jell-o Bavarian cream, and plop it in all before the little terrors descended upon the house. What I didn’t manage to do was remember to use the gelatin I reserved to top it with a clear glaze. Nor did I find a simple recipe that incorporated fruit in a way I was confident about.
Let’s Talk About Set, but Not Firm (Enough)
Right, so, as if this post wasn’t disorganized enough, a sidetrack. But an important and extremely relevant one. I mentioned before that I was kinda improvising my Bavarian cream recipe, and it has to do with soft set vs firm set. This seems to be the biggest and most common mistakes people on the internet make when making gelatin recipes, especially if they’re using flavored gelatin mixes, like Jell-o, as opposed to unflavored gelatin.
So what’s the problem? Some poor soul will attempt to unmold their showstopping gelatin dessert, and it will softly plop out into an vaguely defined blob. Luckily, it will still taste okay, but they will think to themselves “Where did I go wrong? I let it set overnight!” Here’s how to avoid this yourselves, if you choose to walk the jiggly path of Jell-o.
Soft set vs Firm set
There’s many recipes that incorporate gelatin that aren’t meant to be unmolded. This is because they only contain enough gelatin to thicken the mixture, but not enough to make it firm enough to stand by itself. If you look at a box of Jell-o mix, for instance, you’ll notice the default instructions have you add a total of 2 cups of water to a 3 ounce package. But if you want to make Jell-o Jigglers, where you cut out Fun Shapes from a pan of set Jell-o with cookie cutters, the ratio is 2½ cups to twelve (12) ounces. For anyone that hates doing math in their head, the different between what we’ll call “medium set” Jell-o and “firm set” is an over two-thirds reduction in the amount of liquid.
So what inevitably happens is unexperienced molders (…I’m sure there’s a better term, but) will start with the liquid ratio for medium-set Jell-o, and then…add more liquid. Sometimes they don’t quite realize that they have, indeed, added more liquid (more on this later), but here’s some tips to help you avoid this same mistake.
Is the recipe you’re using pictured unmolded?
A lot of recipes out there are meant to be piled into little dessert glasses, or plopped into a pie crust, or layered into a glass baking pan, if you’re fancy. If you can only find the recipe pictured this way, that’s a good indication that the recipe is soft set, and can’t be unmolded.
What’s the liquid to gelatin ratio?
This can get complicated fast due to something called “bloom strength”, but luckily us uncultured Americans tend to only use two types of gelatin: unflavored powdered gelatin (Knox Gelatine), or flavored dessert mix (Jell-o). For the latter, you now know anything more than two cups to 3 ounces does not bold well for unmolding. If using powdered gelatin, there’s usually always a recipe for some sort of firm set dessert, such as Knox’s “Fruit Blox”, that you can check to gauge how your recipe’s ratio compares.
Okay, but what’s the TRUE liquid to gelatin ratio?
The number one source of too soft gelatin I see time and time again is added fruit. Even if you drain it thoroughly, it’s not dried fruit. It’s moist fruit. So if you are making a molded dessert with fruit incorporated, your ratio needs to be firmly in firm set range. There’s also some additional potential pitfalls with certain fruits containing certain enzymes that prevent setting, but rarely do I find that Pineapple is the Problem.
Additionally, certain ingredients, like whipped cream, can both work for and against you. While dairy can add structure, the rule of thumb is that whipping doubles volume. So that 1 cup of heavy cream is actually 2 cups of whipped cream, which won’t affect your ratio nearly as much as 2 cups of fruit juice, but also…well you get the idea. For dairy-based desserts, I highly recommend going back to basics and just making sure the recipe is pictured unmolded.
Okay, But Did Your Thing Come Out or Not?
Yeah, more or less. There was no leaks when filling, and I was able to release it from the springform without issue. I staged it with a little ribbon around the center, similar to what I saw other charlotte chefs do, but I noticed later many of them also add something around the bottom to hide the rim of the pan. Incredibly, I’ve seen a number of springform pan-using desserts that must have fully de-panned the final result, but I wasn’t going to add that to my many, many challenges of this technically simple dessert.
As for the ice wafers versus ladyfingers?? Meh. This has really solidified for me (or shall I say ‘gelled’?) that charlottes are certain to be soggy. It looks pretty! But at what cost. And while I managed not to visibly break or crack any of the wafers, the weight(?) of the cream filling did cause some resulting wonkiness once set.
Some separation of the wafer layers, particularly at twelve to four o’clock
Honestly, I would much sooner try another cold soufflé than this, in terms of Bavarian cream-based desserts. And if I’m doing something in a springform, I’d prefer it involve a graham cracker crust. But if you need something for your social media feed, this is a good balance between aesthetic and taste – no one will know you quietly plucked off the wafers.
One final challenge awaits. Will my chaudfroid shock and awe? Or will it shock and awe, but in a bad way? Who knows. I do know that it’s definitely going to take me all day.
kelp 