Recipe: Red Finger Jell-O Hearts

Scott, depending upon your guest list, you could make finger Jell-O hearts instead of (or in addition to) a birthday cake. Your one-year old can all she wants with this treat.

There are a variety of ways to make finger Jell-O. All of them are easy. I am posting a few ideas below. These were previously posted on TKL.

The recipes call for cutting the firm Jell-O into squares. For your daughter's party, I would suggest you use a heart-shaped cookie cutter and make heart-shaped treats.

After cutting the heart shapes, you'll end up with various sized bits of firm Jell-O. You could make a nice salad or dessert with this by mixing the pieces with cool whip type dairy creamer. You could also add almond bits, pineapple bits (drained), shredded coconut, etc. to this salad/dessert mixture.

If you decide to use the dessert AND the finger Jell-O hearts for your party, you could put the dessert in a nice glass bowl in the center of the table instead of cake. OR you could mix the dessert and put it in individual plastic clear stubby glasses for easy serving. The individual hearts could be put on a couple large plates, OR individually on plastic plates.

You could even decorate the individual hearts. Squirt a bit of whipping cream (from a can) on the plate before putting the heart on the plate. Place the heart on the plate so some of the whipping cream is under the heart...the rest puffs up over the edge of the heart. You could write your daughter's name on each heart (if her name is not tooooo long) by using the cake-decorating frosting you can buy in tiny tubes in the store. You could also embelish further by dropping a few "sprinkles" over the whipped cream.

You could puff extra whipping cream on your daughter's heart in which you can insert her first birthday candle.

Finger Jell-O never looked so good.

(I recommend you make enough finger Jell-O hearts for the adults also. Us older kids like to play, too.) Hope this helps, Scott.

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Some Finger Jell-O recipes:

FINGER JELL-0 aka KNOX BLOX

4 envelopes Knox Unflavored Gelatin
3 packages (3 oz each) flavored gelatin
4 cups boiling water

In a large bowl, combine Knox Unflavored
Gelatin and flavored gelatine; add boiling
water and stir until gelatine dissolves.
Pour into large shallow baking pan
(for example, 13" x9") and chill until
firm. Cut into squares to serve.
Makes about 100 one-inch squares.

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ANOTHER FINGER JELLO
3 pk Jello -- (any flavor) (3oz)
1 c Whipping cream
2 1/2 c -Boiling water

Boil water. Add gelatin and jello,
stirring until dissolved very well.
Add whipping cream and continue
stirring. Pour into 8 x 8 pan and
chill well. When firm, cut into
squares or rectangulars, or use
cookie cutters to cut into shapes.

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ANOTHER FINGER JELL-0 aka JELL-O JIGGLERS

Ingredients:

4 small or 2 large JELL-O Brand Gelatin
2 1/2 cups boiling water or apple juice

Completely dissolve gelatin in boiling
water or juice. Pour into 13 x 9-inch
pan. To un-mold: dip pan in warm water
about 15 seconds. Cut into squares or
use cookie cutters. Lift from pan.

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LAYERED JELL-O

To show off your layering, pick your
Jell-O flavors so that each layer is
a very different color from the adjoining
layer. Or, add whipping cream to one of
the layers to lighten the color. Many
layers can be built up this way.

When layering Jell-0, you can make the
layered treat so the different layers
stick together tightly, or you can make
the layers so they "peel" apart.

Kids seem to love the peel-apart layers.
The difference is the amount of time you
allow each layer to gel before adding the
next. The longer the Jell-O sits inbetween
adding the layers, the easier it is to
pull apart.