Shot de Coeur for V Day, not VD day.

Happy Valentine's Day 2009.

Little do people know that this celebratory day hails all the way back to Ancient Rome. The days of February 13th through the 15th were known as Lupurcalia which a raucous festival featuring dog sacrifices, nudity, and flogging women to ward off infertility. According to Derek it was also a time where men and women would intermingle, go for a bit of coffee talk, and see if marriage was in the making. Hmm. Now it's a dreamy, romantical day for some and for others, namely waiters at fancy restaurants, a nightmare.

On a more positive note, and there's nothing like talking about gelatin shots to get me all dreamy, for today's celebration I bought some silicone heart molds and made three red/pink shots.

The first were Lolly Ranchers. I made them with watermelon gelatin, watermelon pucker, and vodka. Simple and tasty. They have that tart/sweet taste of a jolly rancher

The second shots were Shots through the heart (and you're to blame). These were three layered shots. The top and bottom layers were strawberry gelatin and vanilla vodka. To make the in between layer I added condensed milk which turns the red to a nice contrasting pink. I topped them off with chocolate sprinkles (also known as shots in some part of the country- have to look that up)

The third concoctions were Shot de Cacao Coeur. I wanted to create a sweet chocolate sensation that most people think of when it comes to Valentines day. I made a two layered shot with the first layer being cherry gelatin with vodka and creme de Cacao. I should have added some condensed milk to create a color variation. The top layer was cherry gelatin with Godiva Liquor. Not only did it have a rich chocolate taste, it gave the gelatin a sultry dark red color. These are definitely my favorite. As you bite into them the chocolate taste melts nicely with the cherry flavor. If I can brach out, I love to learn how to make edible chocolate heart shaped shells. That would be inebriate decadence.

I hope you enjoyed both the written and pixelated descriptions. Contact me if you'd like to try the actual shots. Do not attempt to lick the screen.

Wrong team, right shot

Hello all,

This year I was a little behind on the Superbowl fad. To be honest I've never really followed one since Superbowl XX when the Chicago Bears were at the sensational peak. Jim McMahon and his cocky quaterbacking aligned with Peytons running and the Fridges.... well whatever Refrigerator Perry did made for a sensational season. Plus they made a rap. A rap!!. I still have the Superbowl Shuffle on original LP. I need to check ebay and see if its worth anything. Or not.

But this year's football fad was uber beyond me. Until I decided it was a perfect opportunity to make more gelatin shots. I looked up the teams, and the Cardinals playing the Steelers, OK, Cardinals muy facil. Red. I went with a strawberry margarita shot. The Steelers were going to be a three layered, cola and grape jello with a lemon/yogurt layer sandwiched between.

However due to time constraints, I could only make one of the two kinds of shots. Why not make it like a bet and make the team I thought most likely to win. As you can see I bet wrongly.

For fun shape I used the jello football helmets and footballs molds. The shots came out winners in taste and fun, but the team....not so much.

InAGARation Party

I think a handful of you fellow science nerds will get the title pun, but agar is a gelatin made from seaweed. Anyhoooo....

OK. So I get a little crazy in the winter. Its one of the reasons I lived on the West Coast for so many years. We paid a price when my ancestors migrated from Africa to the cold of Northern Europe. And the price is mid-winter, vitamin D deficient craziness. Last year I chose to train for the Boston Marathon to stop the insanity (it's all depends on how you define insanity). This year I think it will be Gelology that gets me through.

For the past month, the hub bub over President-elect Obama has been overwhelming. He burps, we all look to the Middle East conflict and Dow to see if it's had an effect. And it does. So I wanted to make a gelatin shot that was as equally big and inspired by hope and change. With the help of Tovah, I came up with the idea to make a mold in the shape of the White House.

It has been on my mind to up the anty, and try to make my own decorative gelatin molds. Ever since I saw the work of jello artist Liz Hickok, I was intrigued to make a mold. I emailed her about her Jello version of the city of San Francisco. Unbelievable! So pretty and indicative of the creativity of San Francisco. She told me about Smoot-on, a company that makes silicone mold making material.

From there I googled them and called the company. A woman gave me the information for distributors and of all my luck, one of the four in the country is here in Boston. I went to Reynolds Advanced Materials, and had a nice chat with the two owners, Scott and Ian about what kind of silicone material would be food safe, how to prep the original and a lot of other helpful information. I purchased my eleven pounds of Smooth-on and away I went.

My friend Matt down in DC, procured a miniature model of the White House and overnighted it to me.

From there I coated it in soap and removed the peripheral trees and shrubs from the plaster model. I mixed the components to activate the silicone material, poured it over the model and let it sit over night. To get a better understanding of how to make a model I turned to the Queen of everything- Martha Stewart. There were a couple videos with her showing how to make candles with another product by Smooth-on. And if you haven't watched Amy Sedaris make a cake with Martha- ya just gotta.

After the silicone was hardened, I removed the model and heated treated it. Then I melted down candle wax and made six positives. They weren't pretty the first round, but I got better at making them. I took the best and made shot trays with three Whitehouse's each and 52 hours from the starting the project I had seven Whitehouse gelatin shot molds! I felt like a real artist.


Now that I had the molds, I was ready to get this Inauguration party started. I went with a red, white, and blue theme.

For the Red Whitehouses, I used watermelon gelatin, unflavored gelatin, watermelon pucker, and vodka,
The white Whitehouses were Pina colada mix, unflavored gelatin, and rum
The blue were simply Berry blue gelatin and blueberry vodka.

To honor the first African American to hold office, I made some Rootbeer float shots as well. To detail the progress, here are the pictures from starting mold to finished product.


So now that I've entered into the mold making, I keep looking around at what else could eventually be turned into tasty drinky jiggly treats. Move over tootsie rolls, cuz whatever it is I think I see, becomes a jello shot to me!

Floaters

This concocction came about because I spied root beer schnapps at the liquor store. What would one make with that I wondered. Here was my reply... to myself. A root beer float jello shot.

I used knox gelatine, flattened root beer, vanila stoli, and root beer schnapps. The root beer schnapps can give it a medicinal taste so use about half schnapps and half vodka for the alcohol. I topped the shots off with whipped cream but some vanilla ice cream could also do the trick.

Cranberry sauce..with a twist

On this Thanksgiving, I decided to make a little variation on tranditional cranberry sauce. I followed the recipe on the bag to make the sauce and then added some sugar free cranberry gelatin I found at the local grocery store and alcohol. But since this is the SCIENCE and art of gelatin shot making, I tried a different recipe for cranberry sauce and gellified as well as liqiuorified that one too. That was sample B.


After some tastings by the family, the choice was clear. Sample A won overwhelmingly. (Sample size=5).

Sample A was made with cranberries, sugar, and water. I boiled them until the berries popped. Then mixed in the raspberry gelatin, cooled and added Absolut mandarin and some triple sec.

Sample B was made with cranberries, an orange, and sugar. I chopped them in a food processor and blended them into boiling water and gelatin.

Again, Sample A was the winner.

Upon telling a neighbor about the experiment, he asked if I had molded them into the shape of a tin can.

D'oh!

So I rushed right out and got more ingredients. And here's the final finished product.

Somewhere over the Endzone...

Hello All,

Here is a creation from last week's Flag Football Superfabulous Bowl. I needed to make a shot that reflected the colors of all the teams as well as the out and proud nature of the league. However, when it came to silver I got stumped. But here are the 12 layered pride shots.






The key to making these shots, was to prepare all the gelatin ahead of time. I poured them into plastic cups at room temperature. Then I'd pour one layer, let it sit in the fridge until think and then add another layer. It took me three hours to make from start to finish.



But just look at the satisfied faces of some of the footballers.

Football Field Fun!

We had a team flag football party the other weekend which got me thinking, "how could I make an actual football field jello shot?"

I decided to make a two layered shot with a topsoil layer below and a grass layer on top. I also garnished it with field lines and cones. To make the top soil, I needed to make brown. For reasons not needing explanation, Jell-o brand gelatin does not make brown jello. What, perhaps, would be the flavor? Maybe Durian. If you know any product managers at Kraft Foods, feel free to pass along my idea.

I decided to boil cola and add purple gelatin. This is what I did for the coffin shots, but Grape was absent from the store but they did have Blackberry fusion. That'll do pig.

For the grass, I didn't want the layer below to show through, so I made a lime green jello and added some yogurt to make it opaque. It also added a pastel green color to the grass that I liked.

The field gold lines were made with decorative frosting and the cones from Candy Corns.

Needless to say, the field was devoured in minutes.