A Retro Dessert and A "Green" White Elephant Gift

This is one of two desserts that I made for the Christmas buffet at my aunts house. I was going to make a sausage, apple, cornbread dressing but my mom said she wanted to make the dressing so she handed off her dessert to me. I also made a cake, but today I will share with you a lovely retro dessert- a Jello mold :-)

I've made many a Jello salad in my lifetime but I've never put it into a mold before. I thought this would be fun though since it was for a special occasion. As if you need a special occasion to put Jello into a pretty dish. ha ha! This mold is actually a cake pan from Kaiser that I got at Goodwill for $3! I think I got a great deal on it as it was brand new and not a single scratch on it. I decided to go with orange gelatin with crushed pineapple, marshmallows, whipped topping and coconut. An Ambrosia mold to be exact.

It was really good and I liked the combination of these flavors in this fluffy salad. I did leave out the coconut because my sister *thinks* she's allergic to it. The only change I would make next time is to use the mandarin juice in place of the cold water and to maybe reduce the amount of overall liquid in this recipe by about 1/4 cup just to firm it up a bit. I'd make this again though with the coconut as I think it would be a nice texture.

Ambrosia Jello Mold from Kraft

• 1 can (8 oz.) crushed pineapple in juice, undrained
• cold water
• 2 cups boiling water
• 1 pkg. (6 oz.) orange Jello Gelatin
• 1-1/2 cups thawed Cool Whip
• 1 can (11 oz.) mandarin oranges, drained
• 1-1/2 cups miniature marshmallows
• 1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Drain pineapple, reserving juice. Add enough cold water to juice to measure 1 cup. Add boiling water to gelatin mix in large bowl; stir 2 min. until completely dissolved. Stir in measured liquid. Refrigerate 1-1/4 hours or until slightly thickened.

Whisk in Cool Whip until well blended. Refrigerate 10 min. or until mixture will mound. Stir in pineapple, oranges, marshmallows and coconut. Spoon into 6-cup mold sprayed with cooking spray.

Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm. Unmold.

Tips from Kraft:

How to Stir Cool Whip into Gelatin:

Spoon Cool Whip into slightly thickened gelatin, using the amount of Cool Whip specified in the recipe.Gently stir the Cool Whip into the gelatin until all the Cool Whip has been incorporated and mixture is a uniform pastel color.

How to Unmold Gelatin:

Dip mold in warm water for about 15 sec. Gently pull gelatin from around edge with moist fingers. Place moistened serving plate on top of mold. Invert mold and plate; holding mold and plate together, shake slightly to loosen. Gently remove mold and center gelatin on plate.

I mentioned in the title that there was a "Green" White Elephant Gift as part of this post. A couple months ago, Laura of Hey What's For Dinner Mom? hosted a white elephant gift exchange between bloggers who wanted to participate. The deal was to send a fellow blogger a gift that we didn't want-- a regift of sorts, which was the "green" part of the exchange. I sent my gift to Laura in Alaska and her postal service took 3 weeks to get it to her- crazy! I got a gift this week from Healthy Wife, Crazy Life.

In my little package was a cardboard birdhouse. Which at first sounded odd to me, but I started to look at it, I think it's pretty neat. It's water resistant and folds together pretty easily. I'll have to try it out this spring when the birds come back to my house. I also got a scented pencil made of recycled newspapers that smells like chocolate, some vanilla bean lotion, a mini bottle of hand sanitizer and a small cosmetic bag. Fun!

Thanks so much!