Fruit Jello Shots

Two posts in two days! Oh snap!

I realize this isn’t technically baking, but it was a neat project I did that I decided to share

These were time consuming to make, but the look of them turned out great.

The story behind my idea to do this was that I first came across a picture of professionally done ones from Reddit. I always thought it was a neat idea, but didn’t ever have cause to do it; I just thought it looked neat. Then March 17th rolled around and I finally had a reason to gut a bunch of fruit! Woo!

Okay, what you need for this is extremely simple. For anyone who has ever made jello shots, it’s exactly the same thing…except this time your container is fruit (Well, the rinds anyways).

INGREDIENTS:

• Lime, Lemon, and Blueberry jello
• Fruit! (I used limes, lemons, and oranges)
• 6 cups boiling water (2 cups per flavor)
• 3 cups alcohol (I happened to use 3 different kinds because that’s what we had in the house, 1 cup per flavor)
• 3 cups cold water (1 cup per flavor)

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DIRECTIONS:

Nothing too invasive here. Pour each mix into a separate bowl (medium size should be fine). Add 2 cups boiling water to each flavor. Stir until the powder is fully dissolved. Let cool slightly, then add 1 cup alcohol of your choice and one cup cold water. Set aside.

Now that that’s done, lets cut up some fruit! Cut each one in half and grab a knife. Cut a perimeter around the outside of the fruit so that you will be able to scoop it out as a whole.

Next, grab a spoon! Similar to eating a grapefruit, but much more aggravating lol. The best way I can scribe this is to use the spoon to loosen the fruit until you can work your hand in there to grab and coax it the rest of the way out.

.Fantastic! Now we have a wonderful vessel. Repeat until all your desired fruit is finished. Place them in casserole dishes to a) add stability to them, and b) if any holes were made via the knife or spoon, the liqui-jello will just pool at the bottom and not spill everywhere.

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Cool overnight. It really needs to be chilled longer to make sure that the jello fully adheres to the rinds and makes cutting wedges easier.

Now the fun part: Making it look like actual wedges. I found that limes have thick, hard rinds that make this process a PAIN. Oranges and lemons weren’t too bad at all.

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All done! I’m a fan of testing one of each color for quality control purposes :p Enjoy!

Raspberry Chocolate French Macaroons

For anyone who knows me, if there’s chocolate in the title, I have to try it. If I could be healthy and properly sustained just eating raw cookie dough and spoonfuls of chocolate, life would be very, very awesome. Alas, there’s this whole “eating healthy” thing I have to do, but hey – it’s nice to dream!

So today I decided to try my hand at making macaroons. Now normally when I think of macaroons I think of the ones I eat for Passover, so I was quite happily surprised to find out there was indeed another kind! I’ve never made meringue before, but I thought today is as good a day as any to give it a go.

I found this recipe online for raspberry chocolate french macaroons and they looked delicious! On to my adventures/attempt at constructing these little edible bites.

The one thing I have to say in advance is I didn’t add in the almonds with the confectioners sugar like it told me to, because I didn’t have any in the house and honestly didn’t feel like going out to grab just one ingredient. I think this may have altered the flavor slightly and I may have liked it more had I added it in (though I’ve never really been a meringue fan in the first place lol).

Got everything separated, mixed, combined, colored, baked, and cooled! Very hard not to lick the spoon while making the ganache. Very. hard. I may have had one or two weak moments.

Confectioners sugar

Just the whites!

start beating

until it holds soft peaks

add granulated sugar and food coloring, beat until hard peaks

combine in stages with confectioners sugar

pipe out your little dollops!

chocolate and heavy cream

a little goes a long way

time to let it cool

quite a bit left over

a little dollop ‘ll do ya!

All done!

The instructions said to make the dollops the size of Hershey kisses, but if I did this again I’d make them bigger (so that they take 2-3 bites to eat instead of just one). And less peak-y. Very hard to make a sandwich stand upright if both sides are pointy. You can also see that I had quite a bit left over, I think partially because the size was so tiny…but I’m not sure.

Finished! Came out well, the flavors were good, but I’m not sure this is something I would make often, unless everyone else likes meringue flavor/texture.

All done!