Citrus Surprise Jello

Yet another venture into gel cookery, molding, and garnishing!

I found the idea in a cook booklet called Joys of Jello (no publication date, maybe early 1970's?).

The booklet contains many different ways to manipulate their jiggly product.  That you see, is the true joy of jello. 

I found a recipe for "Citrus Surprise" that intrigued me.  Joy and a surprise all in one dish!  The surprise is that when you whip jello it turns white(ish) and fluffy, doubling in size!  Below is the photo of "Citrus Surprise" from the booklet:

I was ohhing and ahhing over how much the whipped top bulked up the thing and that it was so white compared to the orange jello it was originally a part of. 

  

I set forth to make my own version but as always I changed matters up a tad bit.

I used peach jello as the base, mandarin oranges, canned pineapple, and some shredded coconut.  Original recipe below:

How to whip Jello:

The thing that's a bit of a nightmare when making different layered jello molds along with adding fruits (or heaven help us...green beans) which appear to have a floating mystical appearance is having to watch and wait for the right chilled consistency to happen before moving on to the next step.  The jello has to not be liquid and not be getting too firm.  I have read "egg white consistency"" as the goal.  Time frame for when this magical moment happens can vary depending on the temp of the water and fridge.  It becomes a pain in the rump checking it every few minutes.  This particular jello dish encountered several issues along the way pertaining to this nightmare.  I tried to find a more practical way to make this dish happen and not waste my time.  But maybe it's not best to hasten the process by cooling the jello in the freezer (and forgetting about it) and it certainly is not advised to then put said jello in the toaster oven to defrost it to be able to add the fruit.  This is the reason you can only see the top fluffy layer.  The bottom section didn't quite set properly. 

I did however follow instructions correctly to make the fluffy surprise top which seemed to take forever to poof up.  I was a bit bummed that it did not turn white.  Even through all the mishaps the dish tasted decent....that was the true surprise!