Hello, Jell-O!: 50+ Inventive Recipes for Gelatin Treats and Jiggly Sweets [A Cookbook] - Hardcover

Belanger, Victoria

 
9781607741114: Hello, Jell-O!: 50+ Inventive Recipes for Gelatin Treats and Jiggly Sweets [A Cookbook]
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1607741113 ISBN 13: 9781607741114
Verlag: Ten Speed Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Food blogger Victoria Belanger shares the secrets to creating inspired, modern gelatin desserts—with fresh fruits and flavors, new twists on trendy treats, and easy but artistic presentations.

A classic, nostalgic treat is getting a makeover, thanks to innovative culinary bloggers like Victoria Belanger—aka the Jello Mold Mistress of Brooklyn—whose jiggly creations have caught the eye of food journalists, trendspotters, and a new generation of food crafters.

In Hello, Jell-O!, Belanger shares her secrets for turning humble gelatin into impressive yet economical desserts that will steal the show at your next party or potluck. Featuring holiday crowd-pleasers such as Pumpkin Pie and Eggnog Rum, kid-friendly favorites like Root Beer Float Squares, grownup boozy bites like Sparkling Champagne and Strawberries, and vegan delights like Watermelon Basil Agar, the Jello Mold Mistress serves up recipes for every occasion. The deliciously wiggly versions of Key Lime Pie, Chai Tea Panna Cotta, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups will charm the inner child in every sophisticated home cook.
 
Readers can create these whimsical recipes using their favorite gelatin products, from unflavored gelatin powders to preflavored gelatins from popular brands like Knox and Jell-O (both brands are registered trademarks, and their owners are not sponsors of Hello, Jell-O! or otherwise affiliated with the book).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Victoria Belanger was born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. After studying photography at Virginia Commonwealth University, she moved to New York City and began experimenting with creative Jell-O molding and photographing her colorful creations for her website, The Jello Mold Mistress of Brooklyn (jellomoldmistress.com). Victoria and her jiggly masterpieces have been featured in the New York Times, Globe & Mail, Food & Wine, The Splendid Table, and Cute Overload. In addition to Jell-O molding, she works as a photographer and enjoys exploring the five boroughs of New York City by bicycle.
 
Raquel D’Apice is a freelance writer and comic who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.

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Introduction    

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 didn’t want to remember Bill Cosby.” Some of us harbor vague memories of Jell-O recipes from the 1950s—instructions 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. It’s perfect for people with nominally functional teeth who are in bed before eight thirty in the evening.”

It’s not that we don’t 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 allowed—places where the wines are described as “warm and floral, with a hint of earth” and where it’s 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, aren’t we? We let go of Jell-O the same time we abandoned our Sandylion sticker collections and our Hypercolor T-shirts. Adults don’t eat Jell-O, or if they do, they don’t 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, “It’s so nice today. Can we work outside?” There are days when it’s 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, let’s 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 can’t 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 wasn’t 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 wasn’t what I wanted for something I remembered so fondly. Jell-O needed a makeover, badly, and I was ready for the challenge.

B.Y.O.J.     

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 I’s:
 
Interesting  ~  Inexpensive  ~  Idiotproof
 
The first seems self-explanatory. The first time I took Jell-O to a party was the first time that something I had taken received so much attention. In a sea of cookies and pies, Jell-O molds get noticed at the dessert table. If you’re adding liquor, they will get noticed even more quickly. (You can add a fourth I for Inebriating, if you are so inclined.) Rather than whipping up a batch of prepackaged watermelon Jell-O in a tin and sticking it next to a tray of plastic forks, I began creating my own flavor combinations: mint and watermelon, coconut and raspberry, chile and chocolate. I began adding cream or fresh fruit. I began layering, creating Jell-Os that are both opaque and translucent, creating Jell-Os with effervescent bubbles trapped in the gelatin, creating Jell-Os so brightly colored that they looked like those displays in modern art museums that people think are pretty but nobody completely understands.

The second is an issue for a lot of people—cost. I do not always have the money to purchase specialty ingredients. If I have a choice between paying my rent or spending fifty dollars on novelty groceries, I will pay my rent. Most of my Jell-O creations cost a few dollars at most. This allows me not only to keep a roof over my head but also to continue to enjoy electric lighting and indoor plumbing and to occasionally take a taxi home in the pouring rain. My Jell-Os are for people who want to create something visually striking but who would rather not pay four dollars for a single cupcake because, hey, those car payments aren’t going to pay themselves.

As for the Jell-Os being idiotproof, I will say this about myself: although I am interested in cool ingredients and flavor combinations, I am not a trained chef. The Jell-O recipes here are for people who are creative and fun and are decent at following directions. Even if your highest culinary achievement was baking a cookie in an Easy-Bake oven using a 100-watt light bulb and you will never land a position on a cooking reality show, your experience—or lack of it—in no way prohibits you from trying any of the recipes in this book.

And if you feel comfortable working with Jell-O after attempting some of these recipes, feel free to get inventive and come up with some creations of your own.

The Birth of Creative Jell-O

My love of creative Jell-Os grew out of my love of living in New York City, where everyone is mind-bogglingly creative. I am surrounded at all times by people who paint or draw or write or create fascinating graphics using their computers—people who sew their own clothing or work in interior design. In the midst of all this, I had hit a creative wall. Although I consider myself a creative person, my innovative streak had recently been limited to staging artistic photographs of my hamster. (While endearing, it was not as if I hoped to become the Ansel Adams of hamster photographers.) I wanted to create. I wanted to make something that I could share with others, and creating interesting Jell-Os helped fill that niche.

My first attempt at a creative Jell-O was simple: a vodka tonic with blueberries that I took to a friend’s birthday. It featured a layer of Cool Whip and tonic, with a top layer of blueberries suspended in both vodka and lime Jell-O. Surrounded by other party...

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Verlag
Ten Speed Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1607741113
ISBN 13 
9781607741114
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
128
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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