Jensalittleloopy Cooks the Oldies: Pineapple Surprise

Happy New Year!  May the force be with you, live long and prosper, and fight the power.  I am really looking forward to a kickass year and I hope you are too!

Without further ado…oops I did it again!  Fun with gelatin!  (No this will not be all gelatin all the time, this was just a quickie to go with our lucky New Year’s Day pork.)

Not from a cookbook this time, but rather an old advertisement.  “You make it right in the Dole Pineapple can!”  LOVE IT!

Instead of lime gelatin, though, I decided to use cherry flavor, because I was planning on slapping pineapple rings and maraschino cherries onto the ham and I thought this would be a cute addition to our very festive slapped together because adult humans (read:  ME) were tired New Year’s Eve dinner.  So I totally planned ahead.  Ham.  Jello in a pineapple can.  Yes that IS TOO dinner what is your problem even?

ANYWAY.

Things were looking good.  I drained the pineapple juice from the can.  (What is a No. 2 can?  They don’t sell those anymore so this recipe was obviously created by dinosaurs.  I used a 20 oz. can instead because there was a 2 on it.)

I also dropped a bunch of maraschino cherries into the center of the rings because I thought that might be supercute.

I made the sugar free cherry Royal gelatin according to the package directions, and then poured it into the can.

OOOooOOOooOoooOOOooh.

There was lots leftover, so I also made dinosaurs (an homage to the person who wrote this recipe) and part of a Tardis (because obvious).

A few hours later, things were looking pretty damn spiffy!

*drumroll*

After placing the can in a bit of hot water for a few minutes to loosen the sides, I removed the bottom of the can with a can opener, and gently slid my glorious Pineapple Surprise out of the can.

OMG.

WTF.

Where did I go wrong?!?!?!

Do you remember that movie Poltergeist?  Where Carol Ann was trapped with the ghosties and they hired Tangina & Co. and they sent Diane into the light to rescue Carol Ann?  And when they were pulled out they were covered in ghost goo or whatever like this:

My fucking pineapple rings were abducted by ghosts!!!  This is what I get for going out on New Year’s Eve instead of staying home like I usually do!  Totally preventable tragedy.

Aside from the obvious “abducted by ghosts” explanation, I figure I *might* have screwed up in one of the following ways:

1. A 20 oz. can is not the equivalent of a No. 2 can of pineapple.
2. My can did not say Hawaiian Pineapple, so it must have been defective and/or from some other place with inferior pineapples.
3. I did not drain the juice from the can well enough, and the remaining juice kept the gelatin from setting.
4. I let the gelatin warm up too much before I removed it from the can.
5. This recipe does not work because if it did everyone would be making this all of the time because it is a fucking awesome idea.

So annoying.  Delicious, but annoying.  Really, pineapple and the cherry gelatin totally go together, and the maraschino cherries were a welcome addition to the party.  Kiddo LOVED it.

RIP, pineapple surprise. You were delicious, but not so pretty to look at.  I’m sorry I failed you.

And as I was writing this I dug up the actual recipe.

OH FUDDDDGGGGGEEEE.  You know where I went wrong?  The part of the directions where it said (underlined, even!) to use HALF of the amount of water I would usually use.

BWAAAAAHAHA!  Man, I totally screwed this up!  It was delicious, but still…not pretty!  I am going to hopskipjump my ass straight to the kitchen to try this again.

Dammit.  Of course I have a fail on the second time I do a Cooking the Oldies post.  Will try harder next time, kids.  😉

UPDATE!   Oh yes, this was such an epic fail it appeared on Pinterest Fail!  I am so proud!