What I Did This Weekend...

... was make jell-o shots.  Three kinds of jell-o shots.

First, I made eyeball shots for a George Romero birthday party, hosted by our friend who loves zombies and horror movies.

mmmm... eyeballs

The base was lime jell-o with one cup of water and one cup of citrus flavored vodka.  The "eyeballs" were made with a blueberry stuffed in a maraschino cherry stuffed inside a lychee fruit (from a can).  First, I picked out a small blueberries from the pint (or cut a larger one in half) and then used a knife to enlarge the slit in one of the cherries so I could place the berry inside.  Then, I carefully stuffed the whole thing into the lychee.  I put each "eyeball" into a small shot glass that already had a tiny bit of the jell-o set up and filled the cup with more jell-o liquid.  

They turned out even better than I expected and they were really yummy.  We did take toothpicks with us to the party so that people could loosen the shots before trying to gulp them down.

For the second party on Saturday night (a dessert party!) and the Superbowl party on Sunday, I took the other two varieties:

White Russians & Birthday Cake

The left ones were made with two batches of Knox unflavored gelatin.  First, I used half a cup of heavy cream to soften and mix one envelope of gelatin.  Next, I added half a cup of vanilla vodka and let it set up in a container lined with wax paper.  After it was set, I cut it into cubes and placed them into another container...  

As a quick side note, I learned that a light rubdown of oil into a rectangle Lock & Lock container and a spatula to loosen the sides left me with a great shape and no sticking to my stand-in jell-o mold.

Finally, I covered the cream blocks with another mixture made of one cup of coffee with three packets of gelatin (softened & mixed per the box instructions), one cup of Kahlua and one cup of unflavored vodka.  After I cubed the results, I put each cube into a mini cupcake liner.  These were delicious but tasted 1. heavily like coffee and 2. like alcohol.  People definitely know they are getting some booze with these ones.

For the Birthday Cake flavored shots, I used a layer method with two mixtures.  First in the container was one cup pineapple soda, one cup cranberry cocktail and three envelopes of gelatin, mixed with one cup of cake flavored vodka.  The top layer was half a cup of heavy cream with one packet of gelatin mixed with half a cup of whipped cream flavored vodka.  These were also yummy and probably out-shone the White Russians because many of our friends don't drink coffee (don't drink coffee?!?).

I found a lot of inspiration from the Jelly Shot Test Kitchen blog.  They're doing amazing things with gelatin over there.  

This was a fun project.  I'll definitely stick to the "jiggler" method in the future because it was way easier for people to eat the shots (versus tonguing and sucking them out of a little dixie cup, not that there's anything wrong with that).

Anyone else wish they could get away with jell-o shots at their wedding?  How fun would that be?