wacky tacky: jello recipes

Call it a fixation, if you must, but there is nothing wrong with a grown man constantly thinking about the evolutionary trajectory of a Barbie/princess cake.

If you've been playing along at home, you may recall Blinky,
the Bearded-Lady Cake, who was the centerpiece of our Family
Freak Show Birthday Party.

Our friend's recent marionette wedding at the Bob Baker
Marionette Theater resulted in this naughty, little nuptial-
themed number.

Left with the other half of the doll that I used for the groom's legs (above), I pondered the potential for the remaining torso, arms, and head. This year it was clear that we should celebrate that bastion of hope and freedom, The Statue of Liberty. With a Barbie cake always on my mind, I was confident I had at least one half (the top half) of our 4th of July Kitsch-en Kounter recipe all ready to go.

Well...almost all ready to go.
I had to drape a toga, steal the finial from a small flag for the torch, permanently
bend one arm, and make a tablet and the iconic coronet out of chip board. In a
time when some of our most prominent celebrities are transitioning, I didn't give
a second thought to using this violet-haired man for the the Statue of Liberty;
indeed, they both share that same square-jaw, strong nose, and full lips - a
Classical profile is timeless and of free from gender...plus it's the only doll
torso I had in stock...

And then it was time to paint.
Because realism is so vital to our Kitsch-en Kounter mission, I couldn't just
paint the darn thing green. First I applied a few light coats of metallic, gold
spray paint. The verdigris was achieved with a wash of acrylic craft paint in
Caribbean Blue. Yes, realism is paramount to our operation...with food
safety taking a distant second.

Cake would have been the obvious choice for Liberty's nether regions but I wanted something that truly screamed 4th of July!!! Instead of cake, I decided to further along the Barbie cake's evolution by once again exploring the possibilities of America's favorite gelatinous food medium - Jell-O.

'Merica
To give the lime-flavored gelatin some opacity, I added
a can of sweetened, condensed milk. To get a color match,
I added a few drops of aqua food coloring.

Up until this point, I had everything I needed on-hand to complete the craft/recipe. Strangely enough, I hadn't considered a mold. And what would a Jell-O mold be, after all, without a mold? That's right...just Jell-O.

After much ferreting around in the deep recesses of the cupboards, I came up empty handed. I needed a Jell-O mold with some height and a bit of movement and texture to evoke the sweeping skirts of our statuesque inspiration. And then a strange thing happened; I remembered the best-selling vase from the home-furnishings retailer in which I worked many years ago. It was the correct height and had the organic fluting that I wanted. With no hope of finding the vase, I resigned myself to a hopeless search through the local thrift stores for something that might work. Believe it or not, the very first store into which I set foot yielded the exact vase for which I was looking - an unprecedented bit of good luck!!!

Sometimes I wish my luck would operate on a grander scale...but for today, I suppose this will do.

See those undulating lines?
Don't they remind you of the Statue of Liberty's skirt too?!!!

Given that this was a glass vase (with a thick-sham base and all that fluting) rather than an aluminum Jell-O mold, I was more than slightly nervous about un-molding my creation. After 24 hours in the fridge, I gingerly set the vase into a sink full of warm water and said a quick prayer to the statue's first sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.

Prayers are answered, folks.

Moments later, after a fair bit squelching, I was looking at the
wobbly beginnings of our lime Jell-O Lady Liberty!

Just like Bartholdi and the French government before me, it had come time to assemble my statue and present it as a gift to the people of America - but not without some finishing touches.