CHERRY MEDLEY

TEMPTING AS IT MAY BE to begin our Jell-O adventures by suspending a variety of veggies and fruits in a multi-colored, multi-tiered mountain of jewel-toned gelatin, we feel it is best to start small. The great beauty of Jell-O, though, is even the small recipes seem like a great accomplishment. We should credit much of that feeling of accomplishment to the molding dish itself, really. Those things are amazing!

In General Foods Corporation's Joys of Jell-O, published in 1961, we chose a simple recipe named Cherry Medley.

1 can pitted dark sweet cherries
1 package (3 oz.) Jell-O Black Cherry or Cherry Gelatin
1 cup boiling water
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

We knew this would be an especially flavorful treat because instead of using the normal 1 cup cold water to 1 cup of boiling water, this recipe substitutes a 1/2 cup of the cherry juice. This makes for a pretty and rather dark red colored mold, which almost hides the dark cherries.

STRAWBERRY YOGURT WHIP

THERE'S JUST SOMETHING about Jell-O that seems kid friendly. Or, rather, we should say, usually there is something about Jell-O that seems kid friendly. After all, in the 1950s, America developed a short-lived taste for savory Jell-O salads, often made with all sorts of vegetables, and the company attempted to capitalize on this craze by releasing celery, Italian, mixed vegetable, and seasoned tomato flavored Jell-O. These sounds like the sorts of Jell-O's you'd have to talk kids into eating, presumably by offering them normal-flavored Jell-O as a dessert.

Fortunately, most Jell-O flavors are sweet and fruity and come in bright, primary colors, looking less like a food than an illustration from a coloring book. Mixed with other things, Jell-O looks even more delicious. For instance, Strawberry Yogurt Whip is just strawberry Jell-O and strawberry yogurt. But look at what a frothy consistency it has, and look at what a nice shade of pink it turns!

The instructions are simple, and come from the 1973 book The New Joys of Jell-O Gelatin Dessert Recipe Book. They are as follows:

3 oz Jell-O strawberry gelatin
1 cup boiling water
3/3 cup cold water
8 oz strawberry yogurt

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add cold water. Chill until slightly thickened. Add yogurt and beat with a rotary beater until mixture is light and fluffy. Pour into punch cups or individual serving dishes. Chill about 2 hours. Makes 4 cups or 8 servings.

The Strawberry Yogurt Whip has a very inviting texture, and it tastes pretty much as you would expect it would: like strawberry yogurt sweetened with Jell-O. Some children love yogurt, and this is a great snack for them. Some kids don't like yogurt, and this is also a great snack for them, because you could probably use it to trick them into eating yogurt. They'll thank you later.

ANIMAL PANCAKES

IT'S A GOOD THING there are illustrations for these pancakes in Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cookbook (1965) because the directions alone are pretty sparse:

"Prepare batter for Pancakes as direced on package of buttermilk baking mix.

Form simple animal designs by pouring better for round pancake onto hot griddle; then with a spoon, add small amounts of batter for ears, tail, feet, etc.

Bake turning once."

The illustrations are quite simple, but putting them into practice took some getting used to. Your first attempt, like ours, may end up looking like a regular pancake sprouting spores instead of, say, a turtle. This is with the dexterity of an adult, mind you. We wonder what flapjack oddities the children who followed this recipe produced.

Be patient; you'll quickly get a feel for how the batter spreads in the pan. The advise to use a spoon to add small amounts of batter for the animal's limbs is very useful.

Now the fun begins. We couldn't seem to stop making pancakes and after making two animals we figured out a way to make our own little rabbit shape that we didn't need to copy from the book.

It's fun to see the finished product, crisp and golden brown. Finish your animal with chocolate chip or raisin eyes (we used raisins left over from the Bunny Salad recipe).

Again, when it came down to eating this recipe, it was bittersweet. The pancakes were delicious, but it was sad to see our little menagerie disappear.

KOOKIE KAT SUNDAES

WE LIKE FOOD WITH FACES. Can't tell you why. Something just tickles us about adding some foodstuff to some other foodstuff and producing an expressive countenance. We're of the opinion that food should have personality, and when your meal smiles, or frowns, or winks back at you, there is no denying the personality.

The Kookie Kat Sundae comes from Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cookbook (1965), and is an example of just how easy it is to add an unmistakable mug to a meal. All you need do is put a scoop of ice cream into a bowl (we found some wonderful bowls made out of ice cream cone batter), add three M&M foe eyes and nose, and then put two round vanilla wafers at the top for ears. Voila! A rather adorable creature stares back up at you!

BUNNY SALAD

FOR THIS SIMPLE PROJECT, classified under SALADS in Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cookbook published in 1965, you only need to assemble a few ingredients. The official recipe calls for pear halves, raisins, cinnamon candy, blanched almonds, cottage cheese and lettuce. We have modified this recipe slightly; our bunnies are simply nestled on a bare plate rather than on the suggested bed of greens. Also, instead of a small cinnamon candy for the bunny's nose, we simply used another bit of raisin.

Begin by setting down a pear half, round side up; this will be the bunny's body. Next, find a good placement for the raisin eyes on the narrow end of the pear. After making a few bunnies, we found that it's easier to eat the bunny if he looks angry instead of adorable, so here's a hint: try putting the eyes close together for a bunny you won't feel bad about biting into. Prepare the spots for the eyes by hollowing out small areas with a toothpick. Use a very light hand for this and don't make the hole too big; these raisins need a snug fit. Another note: in preparing these bunnies, we've found that an entire raisin is much too big for just one eye on the little canned pear body. Instead, we chopped the raisin into smaller pieces for a better fit. You will need three small pieces in all, one for each eye, and one for the nose. Using the tip of a toothpick really made it easy to manipulate the eyes and nose by gently pushing them into place for a snug fit.

You do not need to prepare holes for the ears as you do for the eyes and nose. The blanched almonds are strong enough to just be pushed into place behind the eyes. The ears really seem to complete the personality of the little bunnies!

The final part of creating bunny salad comes with its cotton tail made of cottage cheese. Any spoon will do, but we've found that a rounder spoon, such as a melon baller or olive spoon helps keep the tail a bit rounder without the trouble of sculpting the cottage cheese about the hindquarters with a toothpick.

And there you have it! Cute little bunny salad. So cute, in fact, that eating it may be somewhat traumatic.

SATELLITE TOMATOES

THIS RECIPE comes from Betty Crocker's Party Book, which was published in 1960. A few years earlier, in 1957, Russia launched a satellite called Sputnik into space, and so satellites were on everybody's mind in 1960. This was the time of something called the Space Race, when everybody was trying to build bigger and better spaceships, and so Betty Crocker's Party Book suggests doing an entire party based on a Space Age Adventure theme.

There really is not much to this recipe. You scoop out the insides of a tomato and then stick other vegetables into it, and it is supposed to look like a satellite. And it sort of does, as Sputnik was basically just a silver ball with four antennas sticking out of it. But mostly, the recipe just looks like a tomato with other vegetables stuck in it. We suspect it was a scheme by Betty Crocker to get children to eat their vegetables. This seems silly to us, as how many children looked at Sputnik flying through the night sky and though, wow, if I could just get a bite of that?

But, then, plain old veggies are a little dull on their own, and so why not make it a little more fun by sticking one veggie into another? It's very simple, really. You cut carrots, celery, and green onions into evenly sized pieces. Then you take out the guts of a tomato, poke a few holes in the side of the tomato, and then stick the other veggies in. We tried to make it look a little more like a satellite by putting a tea candle into the tomato, but the truth is that it just made the tomato look like a tomato-shaped candle with several other veggies sticking out of it. But we won't complain. That's certainly more interesting that just an ordinary tomato.

INTRODUCTION

THERE IS NOT MUCH EXPLANATION NEEDED. Circus Parade Cake is a series of cooking projects. These projects are based on old cookbooks that are meant for children, for the most part. Sometimes, we will take recipes from other sources. For example, we like Jello very much. Something about Jello always feels as though it were a child's food. So there will be a few Jello projects on here.

What sort of food will you find here? Well, we'll pretty much make any recipe that calls for adding a face to the finished product. Also, you'll probably find a lot of foods that look like rocket ships or animals. If it has bright colors, we're probably going to like it, especially if it is sweet.

We don't like it when we are told not to play with our food. We see no reason why food shouldn't be as fun as anything else. So we are looking for food that is fun, and that, really, is the reason for this blog.