wow and mmm!

The wow is in reference to my last post. Wow. I did not mean to confuse my dear readers. Apparently the elephant in the foreground of my picture totally blinded y’all to the stack of cardboard in the back. My apologies. Actually I’ll blame this one on the elephant and its obesity. Tsk, tsk, how dare he cover up my nicely-stacked stack of cardboard?!!

*pause as you all scroll down and look at my last post….see there IS cardboard in the back, behind the small carved wooden elephant. Amanda’s right again. Fancy that.*sarcasm dripping* *

I have a few progress pictures that I took while working on the elephant, which I shall post perhaps later. I have not yet painted him pink or purple……tho I do still plan to. I finished the elephant himdearself, but I left him in the classroom. Like who really wants an elephant in their house to begin with?! I regret to inform you that I did not photograph the finished product. That shall be done this coming Tuesday. No word yet on when I’ll post them though. Possibly before Hanukkah. Uh huh.

As far as mmm! I would like to introduce you all to a most luscious recipe for Coffee Jelly Frappuccinos. My first thought was one of strawberry jelly, grape jelly, and various and sundry other jellies and how horrible that would taste in coffee. However, a careful perusal of the recipe revealed a quite different story. (Yes, folks, if you click on “the recipe” in the previous sentence, you will see….the recipe.) The jelly part is actually coffee jello, which you make.

This is what mine looked like once I cubed it:

However, if I had carefully read the recipe, I would have known to cube them quite smaller. Like 1/4″ sized, instead of 1/2″ to 1″. They were big. If you decide to make this, cube them small. Trust me. (According to my brother, even the big ones can go up a standard size straw though. But I’m dubious of that.) Lesson learned: the best things come in small cubes.

Another piece of advice I have for you is to use a ginormous blender for the coffee (non-jello) part of the frappuccino. Or you could do what I wish I had done, and just blend half of the coffee and half of the milk and half of the ice (and half of the flavor syrup, if thou so desirest) together at one time. As stated, I did not blend mine this way, and the coffee foam leakage which ensued made me regret that choice. Here I was thinking that 3 1/2 cups of liquid plus about 10-12 ice cubes would fit nicely in a 5 (or was it 6?) cup blender. HA! <—–aka “obviously not.” Lesson learned: bigger really is better.

The recipe says at the end, and I quote, “…top with whipped cream.” Guys, that really isn’t necessary. Below you will find a picture I took of the blender after I poured out like half its contents into me and my brother’s respective glasses.

See that thick white layer on top? Well it’s whipped topping. Not whipped cream per se because I added milk, not cream, to the coffee. But it’s whipped and on the top, so there. In the pictures I took of the finished coffee jelly frappuccinos, you’ll see the ultra-thick layer of whipped topping. Seriously, like 2/3 of the cup. (Hint: the coffee jello floats to the top of the coffee liquid, but sits beneath the whipped topping. Ah, now the picture is becoming clearer.) Come to think of it, it’s really like coffee-flavored whipped topping. So why ruin the experience with store-bought, loaded-with-preservatives whipped cream? I don’t know why. Lesson learned: When in doubt, spray-paint the elephant purple. It will be able to hide better amongst the pansies.

And I just love this close up of the coffee jello at the bottom of the glass. Ahhhh, how the mouth salivates!