Everyone has their dish. You know what I mean. When your fancy pants gourmet friend Sally confounds you by bringing melted velveeta cheese mixed with ham to your appetizer party, you look at her with pity. What you don’t know is that her Grammy used to make it on Christmas Eve. As a small child she’d run to her Grammy’s table (again, we’re talking Christmas eve), dip a celery stick in the ham/cheese mixture and munch to her heart’s content. Like I said, everyone has their dish; their “I don’t care how gross it sounds I grew up with it and it makes me happy” dish. I have a warehouse full of these kinds of dishes. But this one is probably my favorite inexplicable-must-have-Thanksgiving dish. I suppose I could explain it after all. My mom made this when I was a child. Today, I have to have it. I love the orange cinnamon cranberry combination. And if I’m being really honest, I use this salad as my cranberry sauce. Oh heaven. Make fun of me all you want, but I bet there’s a dish you can’t live without, a dish that others would judge. You know you do.

Snow Capped Cranberry Mold

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1 cup water
2 (1 lb.) cans whole cranberry sauce
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup diced walnuts
Orange-Cinnamon Topping (see below)
twist of orange peel

Orange Cinnamon Topping:
2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup water
2 cups sour cream
1/4 cup orange marmalade
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
dash salt

Soften gelatin for salad in 1/2 cup water. In a small saucepan, blend remaining 1/2 cup water with cranberry sauce and bring to a boil. Add softened gelatin, orange peel and salt, stirring until gelatin is dissolved. Chill to consistency of unbeaten egg white. Fold in walnuts and pour into a 9-inch square baking dish (I pour it into a pretty square serving dish because this is what ultimately go on your table…so choose pretty). Refrigerate until almost set. Prepare topping below. Pour topping over almost-set cranberry gelatin. Refrigerate until set. Serve garnished with twist of orange peel.

Orange-Cinnamon Topping: Soften gelatin in water in a heat proof cup. Place cup on a pan of simmering water until gelatin is dissolved. Combine sour cream, marmalade, cinnamon and salt. Gradually blend in dissolved gelatin. Pour topping over almost set cranberry gelatin.

Tagged with:
 

One Response to Salad: Snow-Capped Cranberry Jello

  1. EmilyCC says:

    Is this a Phoenix-area thing? I grew up with this recipe as our cranberry sauce, too, and love it!

Leave a Reply to EmilyCC Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:


Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Visit our friends!

A few highly recommended friends...

Set your Twitter account name in your settings to use the TwitterBar Section.