A few weeks back, I tried making rainbow ribbon Jell-O using this recipe. I had originally seen it years ago but never got around to making it - however, it’s an utterly perfect dessert for these stay-at-home times, since you’re checking on it every 45 minutes to add the next layer and it takes pretty much all ding-danged day to do this.
I picked up a disposable, 3"-deep 9 x 13 pan just for this project, and I was so glad for that extra depth! You wouldn’t think 1 1/2 cups of liquid would be that much spread over that size of pan, but multiply it by 11 layers and as you can (maybe?) tell from the photo, it was nearly full to the top.
I had to photograph it on its side, because if I left it upright, the purple layer tended to squish and slide everything else off of it…
See? I think it’s to do with the fact that I gave my pan the lightest coating possible of PAM to facilitate serving later on; since the purple was the first layer in I think the PAM got homogenized with the Jell-O, giving it a certain Teflon quality. (It still tasted good, though, even if it was a bit messy!)
My Jell-O craving has definitely been slaked for a while (); if I try it again, I could see leaving the white layers out and see if that helps it stay together better.
Hooray for rainbows! The recipe sounds interesting. I was thinking the white layers must be cream cheese, but was surprised to discover it is also gelatin with vanilla yoghurt. Hmmmm…
The part of my brain that doesn’t know when to give it a rest thought that if - if! - I were going to do this for a group, the best bet would be individual plastic glasses, like a little rainbow parfait. I don’t want to think about the math involved in figuring out volume, number of glasses required, etc.
It’s actually super-easy, just time-consuming! Because I had it setting up in the basement fridge, I found it helpful to have a Pyrex measuring cup to have my next colour of Jell-O and/or yogurt mixture in, instead of lugging down a bowl. But if you’ve got a whole day to kill adding layers, it’s so worth the time!
I love that calculation! When I first read the recipe and it mentioned getting 12-16 servings out of the pan, I thought that seemed like a mountain of Jello per serving!
); if I try it again, I could see leaving the white layers out and see if that helps it stay together better.
