Last October, I was the queen of Jello. Following the lead of my mentor, The Jello Mold Mistress of Brooklyn, I managed to succeed at this incredible layered jello cake for Isaac’s 8th birthday:
Yes! This is how it's done.
Sliced and with real whipped cream, it was like a rainbow meeting a cloud:
So magically delicious!
So this weekend, when we had something important to celebrate, I decided to go for it again. The occasion was that Isaac, a mere age 8, had accomplished something many adults never do: he earned a black belt in TaeKwonDo! And it wasn’t some “kiddie” black belt, either. The grown-ups did the exact same test. Isaac worked on this for four years, since he was four, and it really seemed cause for having a party. I arranged a get-together with the five other 3rd graders in his class, one of whom, his best buddy Jens, had also just gotten his black belt.
My concept was to honor to event by making a layered jello cake with all the TaeKwonDo belt colors from white to black. This enthusiastic project was dampened a bit when I had a rough day healthwise on Friday and didn’t feel up to it by any means. Indeed I tried to back out of the plan and just make black cupcakes, but Isaac had his heart set on it and had already told all the kids about it.
In the case of Guilt v. Dizziness, Guilt prevailed.
So– 9 colors in a 12-cup bundt pan made for some interesting math in the first place. I consulted the jello mold mistress on how to make black and brown jello and she said black cherry with food coloring and lemon with food coloring, respectively. Of course she didn’t realize I had a small 4-year-old sous chef… Well, Elias may have put in a little TOO much black food coloring into the first layer because it just wouldn’t set. … I waited on and on through the evening with only 8 more layers to go! finally after maybe two hours (the layers are thin and only supposed to be partially set), I went ahead with the red layer. Then brown, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow and white… waiting maybe a half hour for each. The white I made out of sweetened condensed milk and Knox. The whole project dragged on towards midnight and I was getting beyond tired of it.
I had a sinking feeling about it all along. I decided midway that you really do need the opaque layers in between the colors, but so many frickin’ layers! That would crank it up from 9 to 18 — waiting for each one to set separately– and honestly that was beyond the pale. I left it to set all night and went to bed, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
The next day when I unmolded it, it made a disheartening SHLUPP sound, very wet and flabby. I lifted the mold and this is what greeted me:
The Blob! It will eat your children.
Apparently the black food coloring of the top layer (first layer in the pan, because you unmold by turning it over) oozed and seeped all through many of the other layers. It didn’t set and it was way too black and inky. So red, purple, and brown all merged into black. And the few layers that did survive were hideously dyed greyish. Also as I sliced and served it, it began to slump and schlupp even more, until it was a horrible pile of BLECH.
I hoped briefly that it would look better on the plate. But what I got was a jaundiced, alien jello slice that looked ill. Even whipping cream couldn’t salvage it.
The evil rainbow has a pot of black slime at the end.
The only thing that saved the day was that the 8-year-old contingent didn’t a whit! It’s just all one big pile of jiggling sugar and dye to them, so who cares what color it is? We all sang, “Happy Black Belt to You!” to Isaac and Jens, and I think they felt fully feted and quite pleased. After the party, though, I hastened to throw the entire mess away.
Still, congratulations are in order.
Front row, second from left, sticking his tongue out.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Catherine Park