A lot to be thankful for

We had a great Thanksgiving again this year. We always seem to have nice ones since both our families are close and they are both so nice.

Getting right to the main event, Jello. This year I again made two Jello bundts. One in a regular pan like last year and one in a rosette shaped pan. I was a little nervous about the rosette pan because it was quite a bit thicker than the regular.

I also tried, and I do mean tried, to make teenie tiny Jello bundts. I did a dry run earlier in the month which turned out okay, not great. I thought I had learned some things about what would work and what wouldn’t, but…

As I feared, the rosette pan gave me some T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Note to self and all others interested…The thinner the pan the easier to get out. Another note…Little Jello bundtlets, not worth your time, although they are very tasty.

So the mechanics of Jello went like this. The kitchen at the Sokol house was so full and so busy that I demoted myself to the basement bathroom to try and platter up my colorful dish, probably not the MOST sanitary of locations, but my mother-in-law keeps an immaculately clean house (unlike mine) so the bathroom is probably just as clean as the kitchen, right?

So I filled the sink in order to submerge the Jello and get it to release. I ended up having to keep the Jello in the water for so long that by the time it slipped out of the pan it was de-solidified on top. It looked like a tie-dyed soupy mess.

The photo makes it look WAY better than it actually looked. I put it back in it's pan, took it upstairs and threw it out in the snow to resolidfy. (we took it home and ate it all weekend. It still tasted good.)

Luckily I had another. The spare came out nicely and it all worked out just as I was hoping, but not before giving me just a little more trouble and causing me to sweat a few bullets.

After I had melted my first Jello and knowing all my eggs were now in this basket, I was terrified to leave it in the water for a second longer than I absolutely had to. Unfortunately it didn’t come out when I was hoping it would. Not wanting to put in in the water again I moved on to another source. Hair dryer.


It was the hairdryer that saved the day for me. I could put the heat exactly where I wanted and needed it instead of heating the entire thing.
That’s what ended up making it release.
When it came out it basically looked perfect. Whew…what a relief. See that look on my face...That's the look of sweet relief.
These people were expecting a beautiful Jello, and I delivered.

As for the little Jello’s, they were tasty, that’s the good news.
People DID enjoy eating them, also good news.
The bad news on this is they just weren’t nearly as pretty as I was hoping. The pan I made them in was thick like the rosette pan, so I had to leave them in the water extra long and they were soupy when they came out. Since it was so freezing outside, I put them on the porch for 20 minutes, so they were edible and delicious, but…I’ve seen better. That’s just like 2 days of my life I am never getting back. Never again tiny Jello’s. Never again.