illdothedisheslater

Happy New Year!

(Or is it New Years?  New Year’s?  Not 100% sure on that one.)

Busy holiday times means lots of cooking, but sadly few new projects, or anything interesting to discuss.  But I wanted to get one more little post in for the year, so I’ll share these Egg Nog Jell-O Shots from the Serious Eats recipe (of course).  Time restraints called for store-bought nog for my first go-round, as I wanted to try these out before I took them to the Family Christmas Eve Italian Extravaganza of food drink, and friendly gift-theft.  (Our dirty Santa game gets gleefully evil, then afterwards people generally give their gifts to the people who really wanted them.)

And of course it’s not a fun blog post unless I get to shop for a single-use, nonsense piece of kitchen equipment, so I decide to do a fun Christmas shape and get a silicone snowman mold.  I grate nutmeg over the mold first, to make sure every bite has nutmeg, or Mr. Dishes will be able to tell.  Regular bloodhound for nutmeg, he is.

12 ounces of nog get divided in half.  One half goes into a bowl with 4 ounces of your choice of liquor.  SE recommends rum, but I use bourbon, because: Kentucky.  The other half gets heated until simmering, then sprinkled with two packets of unflavored gelatin. (That’s a lot.)  (For some reason I still find the idea of making plain, clear, flavorless Jell-O hilarious.  I don’t know why.  Maybe that will be an April Fools Day post.)  Let the gelatin bloom and set for 5 minutes or so, then whisk everything together vigorously until well blended, and there are no little solid bits floating around.

Pour into the molds.  Very carefully.  And slowly.  And this is tedious.  But at least I had to foresight to rest the mold in a cookie sheet so I didn’t have try to lift a floppy rubbery mold full of goo.  Place in the fridge for anywhere from 6 hours to overnight.  The longer they set, the better.

(Later)

Tada!  And woo hoo!  It worked and they are adorable.  An army of happy little guys.

Just a few reservations:  First I realize that maybe snowmen weren’t quite the right shape for this beige project.  There is something a little unappetizing about them.  The other thing is this recipe removes all of the good things about egg nog – creamy, frothy, rich – and just compresses the bland flavor into a, well, a gelatin.  You have to chew them a little.   The bourbon flavor doesn’t get lost, but I can’t really describe these as “good”.

And then it occurs to me that there will be a lot of little hands at the Christmas party, and maybe jolly snowmen chock-full of stealth booze isn’t exactly a safe thing to put out on the appetizer table among the little’uns.  So back to Michael’s Crafts I go, dragging Mr. Dishes with me to get another mold in a different shape, so I can make a non-alcoholic batch for the kiddies.  (“There were only twelve people in line!” I told him gleefully.)  I even add some green food coloring so the little ones can eat green Christmas trees while the adults enjoy the drunken, light brown snowmen.

Then when the big day finally comes, the following things happen:

I do not let the gelatin bloom long enough, so there are little chewy bits in every bite.

The booze snowmen will not come out of their molds.  They fall apart in chunks, and look like victims of a zombie attack.  Oh well, I’ll take the Kidz Bop version with me anyway.

The kids will not touch them.  One beautiful little cousin deigns to poke one gently, pronounces it “yuck”, and goes back to the sliding-down-the-stairs game that is all the rage.

Oh well.  Sometimes you just have to try.  Happy Holidays to all my readers!  I leave you with a picture I received from my Secret Santa, which she insists is a vintage Santa, and which I insist is Nicholas Cage.

Saint Nicholas Cage?