Halloween....

Have you seen these Jello Worms all over Pinterest lately?  I knew I had to try them out - excellent fun and maximum gross out value don't you think?

 

I didn't have a milk carton, so used a water bottle to hold the straws.  A square milk carton would obv. have been a better choice but necessity and all that...
I was a bit nervous when I started making this... I'd bought what I thought was jelly whilst on holiday in Germany recently, but you know, not understanding German....the fact that it said "gelatin" in the list of ingredients gave me faith.  You know I haven't found proper Jelly here in the Netherlands... So,  I used a pack of German Jelly and a pack of gelatin and followed this  recipe, even though I had to fiddle about with the Jelly quantities...



Cherry flavour...super sour!


 

I was filled with trepidation at this point - you see the recipe calls for a certain amount of cream and when I mixed it in it separated and curdled slightly, although it tasted fine.  The beginning of grossness!  A few drops of green food colour created this rather disgusting colour.

 

 

Now for the "fun" part.  The advice is to squeeze the "worms" out of the straws using a rolling pin.  I didn't do that - I didn't have a suitable place to roll them on to and they were delicate man!  So I painstakingly ran a few straws under water then ran my fingers down the length of the straw to push the worm out.  This was HARD WORK.  I must have stood there for half an hour at least until I ended up with this!

 

 

There is no denying that these really do resemble worms!  My lovely husband took one look at them and declined to even taste one!

 

 

 

A wonderful bowl of worms....

 

 

I must admit, I gave up.  I stopped squeezing half way.  It was too time consuming and I suspected (rightly so) that these worms were a little bit too realistic to be enjoyed by the family.

The taste was also a problem, that Kirsch flavoured jelly was fairly sour, far too diluted and insipid.

Would I make these again, probably not.  Would I recommend you make these at least once in your life as a Halloween treat or April fool's joke?  Then yes, go for it!  Perhaps I used too skinny a straw - perhaps they needed to be the very fat kind?  And if I made these again, I'd use gelatin and a flavoured fruit juice along with a few drops of food colour, that would improve the taste and you'd actually want to eat it because it tasted good.