The next Jello salad on our Salute to Jell-O Salad journey is the Waldorf salad. Generally a salad that can be eaten prior to or in conjunction with a meal, suspending the ingredients in Jello allows this to become an after dinner salad treat as well. According to the Joys of Jell-O cookbook this is a “Two- way Recipe”. If serving as a desert one must consider garnishing with whipped cream, as a salad- serving it on crisp greens and topping it off with mayonnaise is preferred.

For my salad I used Cortland apples, red grapes, celery, chopped walnuts and whipped salad dressing (Miracle Whip) as well as two boxes of lemon Jello.

Technically this is my second attempt at this salad as the first one didn’t set properly and turned into a revolting, oozing blob.
Also, you may remember from my previous Jello post that I found that using only one box of Jello did not give the desired ingredient-mixture to Jello matrix ratio as the picture would suggest, so two boxes is what we will try this time.

My variations other than the double Jello packages ( 2 c. boiling water & 1 1/2 c. cold water) include using both grapes and celery to equal 1 cup.
Also, in my first attempt I did use the long method with the vinegar and salt, but on tasting a sample of the oozing blob, I decided that it had too much bite to it for my taste. I am working on the faith of the “tangy zip” that a “whipped salad dressing” provides instead of mayo to compensate for the absence of the  salt and vinegar.

I found that the the mayo/salad dressing separated off the fruit when mixing, leaving small white specks suspended in the Jello.

Using a Tupperware ring mold circa ~ 1980’s, the full mixture fit perfectly.
While letting the Jello set I prodded it gently to try to  keep the fruit in the centre of the mixture and spread out. Since I started folding in the fruit just a shade too soon of “very thick”, I was concerned that they would all just float to the top and there would just be a base of fruit with lemon Jello on top once it was un-molded. My concerns were not totally unfounded as I discovered that the fruit was not evenly dispersed throughout. Did my prodding help? Maybe. If I waited a smidge more, would that have helped? Maybe. At the end of the day, does it really matter? Nope.

Here is the Waldorf Jello Salad in all it’s glory. I chose to garnish it with grapes and lemon, because there would’ve been too many cream cheese balls for only two people to eat. 😀

The first Jello salad on the menu is the Sunset Salad, it is made with lemon Jello, grated carrot and pineapple tidbits.
This recipe is adapted slightly from The Joys of Jell-O cookbook circa ~ 1967.
I have not followed the recipe to the letter in that I did not add pecans as optionally suggested because I think that they would be too dissimilar in texture to the Jello and unsettling to the soul. Also I did not investigate as to the volume of my mould, it just looked like it would fit.

The final mixture of ingredients was poured/scooped into a simple aluminum mould.
After leaving to set overnight, the gelatin was inverted onto a prepared plate and garnished with maraschino cherries and lemon slices.

The picture in the book suggests to me that there is more Jello than pineapple- carrot mix than what I experienced. My salad (pictured) was very full of carrot and pineapple with not a lot of jello matrix to spare. I think that I will experiment with either halving the pineapple-carrot mix or doubling the Jello and using a larger mould, to suite my own tastes.
All in all a tart salad that is refreshing and a nice addition to a hearty plate of food such as a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.