Raspberry Delight

Don't be deceived by this Delight.

Raspberry Delight

1 3-oz. package raspberry Jello

½ pint vanilla ice cream

1 10-oz. package frozen raspberries

Ad 1 cup boiling water to Jello and stir. Chill until firm. Add raspberries and ice cream and mix with blender or hand mixer. Chill for 45 minutes. Serve with cookies. Makes 6 servings.

Faithful readers will remember I’ve long been intrigued with a packet of photocopied recipes that followed me home from preschool 30-some years ago. (See Peanut Butter Muffins.) I couldn’t get this particular enigma, Raspberry Delight, out of my mind. Woe to the recipe creator who names their concoction a “delight.” It’s so vague as to be deliciously tantalizing to yours truly. Is it a cake? A cookie? A pie? Who knows? Who cares? It’s a delight! And how could this one, with only three ingredients, be anything but?

Three ingredients shouldn't cause this much trouble.

I put the recipe and directions at the beginning of this post, so you would know up front what I was dealing with. With directions this vague, I guess we can only be thankful this same person isn’t writing code for the Mars lander. I mean the thing leaves me practically apoplectic with questions:

1)   What constitutes “firm”? Are we talking Jello that’s soft-set firm – the same consistency at which you’d stir in your bananas, say? Or a little more like Jello Jiggler firm? Or all the way, true-blue hospital Jello firm?

2)   Should I defrost my ice cream first or have a go with a solid brick of vanilla?

3)   Blender or hand mixer? I see varying degrees of splattered puree depending on which device I chose.

4)   Serve with cookies? Is this a dip? A smoothie? What kind of cookies would be best? After all, I only want to enhance my Delight.

5)   Is this really what constituted a healthy snack for a preschooler back in the ‘80s?

My trusty blender, defeated by Delight.

Not one to be outfoxed by a lack of directions, I set out with my adventurous zeal intact. I decided to take the recipe at face value. I let the Jello set up like I was making well, Jello. I did not defrost the ice cream or the berries. I used my blender. Correction: I tried to use my blender. As my husband tactfully put it: “You and I both know what happens when you try to blend something without liquid.” Well put, sweetie, but apparently the recipe developers at Everett Cooperative Preschool did not.  Before the poor blender’s motor actually started smoking, I turned the (kind of combined) mixture into a bowl and finished blending it by hand. Then I answered at least one question: This Delight was a dip. Sort of.

Really, it was more like a mushed-up Pudding in a Cloud, or Great Aunt Ethel’s’ Jello mold that sat out too long at the Easter buffet. But once I tasted it, I was left with only one question:

1)   Why?

Don’t get me wrong – it’s sweet and fluffy. But c’mon. This was a recipe developed for parents of preschoolers – already a pretty harried group of people who don’t have time to do battle with their blenders. You know what would be a real Delight? This cooperative preschool grad says take some prepared Jello, add a scoop of fresh berries and a smidge of ice cream. Now that's a delight done right!

Notes:

·      A half-pint of ice cream is about 1 cup for all of us metric-system flunkies. 

·      As you can see in the pictures, I used cherry Jello and mixed berries, both of which were on hand.

Delight with cookie -- I always follow directions!

Why Don’t You …

·      Give the original recipe a go with these modifications:
1) Don’t let the Jello set beyond the point you’d stir in fruit;
2) Defrost the berries;
3) Soften the ice cream;
4) Use the aforementioned hand mixer or stir by hand;
5) Serve with colorful wafer cookies or sugar cookies.