Fruit Jewels

My oldest son, Josiah, who is 7 years old, has recently taken an interest in cooking. "Wonderful! The time has come," I thought, as I pulled out a cookbook that was given to me at my baby shower before he was born: Kids in the Kitchen by The Pampered Chef. He looked through it and made a list of 35(!) recipes he wanted to try. Fruit Jewels was one of them, and we served these yummy beauties at our monthly Friday evening fellowship potluck a few weeks ago.

Before I proceed with the recipe, let me just say this. Pampered Chef recipes are delicious, but they are so hard to read with all of the PC product info included in the directions. Josiah was slightly bewildered by all of the jargon. "Small Batter Bowl? Classic Scraper? Measure-All Cup? Deluxe Mini-Muffin Pan? What??" If you can wade through all of that, it's worth it though.

What You Need

2 packages (3 ounces each) gelatin dessert (you choose the flavors)

1 and 1/3 c. water

approximately 1 c. fruit

What You Do

Can I just ignore their directions and tell you what to do? Am I allowed to do that?

Get a muffin pan--a mini-muffin pan would be best, but I don't happen to have one of those so I just used a regular one.

Put a few pieces of fruit in each cup.

Mix up your jello.

Pour it over the fruit.

Put it in the frig and let it set up.

This is the kind of recipe that makes me think, "Why didn't it ever occur to me to do this?" It's so simple, but I tell ya--Josiah (and my next two sons) had a blast making this! They loved figuring out which fruit to put in which cup, and which flavor of jello to put over each one. Sometimes they matched color and flavor (mandarin oranges in orange jello), sometimes they matched color but not flavor (pineapple in lemon jello, blueberries in blue raspberry jello), sometimes they didn't match anything (purple grapes in lime jello). But they were in charge, they did the work, and they had a ball!

Happy creating!

All the fine compliments, all the good wishes,

will never replace help with the dishes.

~ from Country Home Cooking

by Marjorie Rohrer