Victoria Belanger - Hello, Jell-O!: 50+ Inventive Recipes for Gelatin Treats and Jiggly Sweets

Copyright 2012 by Victoria Belanger
Photographs copyright 2012 by Angie Cao

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Some of the recipes in this work were originally published on Victoria Belangers website, jellomoldmistress.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Belanger, Victoria.
Hello, jell-o! : 50+ inventive recipes for gelatin treats and jiggly sweets / Victoria Belanger.
p. cm.
Includes index.
Summary: The Jello Mold Mistress shares the secrets to creating inspired, modern gelatin mold desserts, with fresh fruits and flavors, new twists on trendy treats, and artistic presentationsProvided by publisher.
1. Cooking (Gelatin) 2. Cooking (Puddings) 3. Desserts. I. Title. II. Title: Hello, jello.
TX814.5.G4B45 2012
641.864dc23
2011034560

eISBN: 978-1-60774-112-1

Food styling by Kim Kissling
Prop styling by Emma Star Jensen

v3.1

Thank you to all the great folks who worked on the book, including the fantastically funny and witty comedic writer Raquel DApice, recipe tester Bora Chang, photographer Angie Cao and her assistant Calvin Ma and intern Jenn Bakos, food stylist Kim Kissling and her assistants Jason Wheeler and Jody Kicherer, prop stylist Emma Star Jensen, designer Betsy Stromberg, agent Pilar Queen at McCormick & Williams, and editor Lisa Westmoreland at Ten Speed Press.

And special thanks to my mother, father, and all my friends and family who encouraged my gelatinous creativity, scoured the thrift stores of America for vintage molds, showered me with recipe suggestions, and tirelessly taste-tested all my molded creations.

Without all of you, this book would not have been possible.

Thank you!

JELL-O HAS A BAD RAP. Once a playful staple at the pool parties of our childhoods, it has since been consigned to the categories of things you feed to people in hospitals, items in Chinese buffets, and ways we didnt want to remember Bill Cosby. Some of us harbor vague memories of Jell-O recipes from the 1950sinstructions calling for fruity gelatin and mincemeat; recipes that layer lemon-flavored gelatin with olives, green peppers, carrots, and canned pineapple juice. But these are memories we try very hard to suppress. As adults, we look at Jell-O in a practical way: It is a good food, we say to ourselves, for people aged seven and under or ninety-one and above. Its perfect for people with nominally functional teeth who are in bed before eight thirty in the evening.

Its not that we dont have wonderful memories of Jell-O, because we do. But we are adults now, right? We sit back and eat the things people consider adult desserts, like gelato, lavender macaroons, and biscotti (whose crumbs invariably wind up in my hair, no matter how carefully I attempt to eat them). We make reservations at the kinds of restaurants where even the word Jell-O is not allowedplaces where the wines are described as warm and floral, with a hint of earth and where its not okay to just pour ketchup on everything. We are adults who buy the Wednesday print edition of the New York Times in order to read the Dining section and who scroll through foodie blogs, trying to perfect our homemade butternut squash ravioli and cucumber-mint martinis. Asking us if we still eat Jell-O is like asking us what percentage of our week is spent jumping on trampolines. We are too old for that, arent we? We let go of Jell-O the same time we abandoned our Sandylion sticker collections and our Hypercolor T-shirts. Adults dont eat Jell-O, or if they do, they dont take it seriously. They are busy paying taxes, owning smartphones, and occasionally thinking about things like good cholesterol versus bad cholesterol, zero percent APR financing, and chronic back pain. Adults meet people for games of racquetball, join book clubs, and take multivitamins that are not shaped like cartoon characters.

We are adults. Eating Jell-O is, traditionally, not something that adults do.

Except that, as we have discovered, day by day, through our grueling routines, sometimes being an adult is horrifically, mind-numbingly boring. Sometimes there are days when we want to put a fist through our office computers, tear up the paperwork we were supposed to be circulating, and run up to our boss, saying, Its so nice today. Can we work outside? There are days when its beach-weather hot and we are trapped in an office with air-conditioning cold enough to give hypothermia to a penguin. There are days when, lets be honest, we are just not in the mood for a seven-dollar salad with chickpeas and carrot shavings, and if we eat another egg white omelet our souls will die. There are days when being an adult is so completely uninspiring that I would be totally okay with reverting to a childlike state and unapologetically slurping sweet, fruity Jell-O while jumping on a trampoline and holding a squirt gun full of lemonade.

We cant help growing up. But rather than leaving Jell-O behind as a fossilized relic of childhood, I decided to see if I could help it grow up as well. I wasnt about to make a tray of lime Jell-O, cut it into cubes, and put it out on a folding table next to a bunch of juice boxes. That wasnt what I wanted for something I remembered so fondly. Jell-O needed a makeover, badly, and I was ready for the challenge.

As a frequent guest at friends dinner parties, I was tired of taking the requisite bottle of wine or hastily made brownies. I wanted to impress people, but no one was blown away by my ability to purchase a bottle of eight-dollar Merlot or floored by how adeptly I could buy cookies from the corner store. My unusual Jell-O molds not only impressed my friends and my friends friends, they also fit the necessary three