Trish’s Blog

I Googled “jello toast” for recipes, but could only find one. I figure I can forgive myself for never having heard of it until last month on a friend’s blog. It seemed pretty straight forward… buttered bread with jello on it, bake it, and eat. Right? I was dubious, “So… just put pour the powder on? How much is too much? A thick layer, she says. How thick is thick?” I decided to go with the flow and let Arwen correct me in the comments.

Need: Sliced Bread

Now that we’re back from Grandma and Grandpa’s house where we were spoiled with fresh bread daily, the kids have been running the bread machine ragged. We have the same bread machine that they do, thanks to our Zojirushi connection in the family, but there are two differences between them and us. 1.) We are lazy, and 2.) We lack counter space to keep it out and ready to rock.

I asked Sarah to make bread. The recipe for white bread is right on the side of the machine for convenience and she has done it before so I had complete faith in her. (I did, however, remind her to put the paddles in the bottom of the pan before throwing in the ingredients. She has forgotten to do that in the past, and I don’t recommend it. Notice I didn’t say that we threw away the deformed, unmixed rock that came out. We ate it. Oh, yes, we did.) The next day, I asked her to show Zack how to do it. And then the next day, I asked her to let him do it, but shadow him to make sure he didn’t forget anything. I asked her to do the same thing with Seth.

Now every Haley kid save Zoe knows how to make bread in the machine. They are having their way with it! Seth has made bread for several days in a row. His first loaf was so beautiful that we all went nuts. It was enough positive reinforcement for him to keep me in bread indefinitely… or until the 102 pounds of free flour runs out. That’s going to be a sad, sad day, but let’s not go there. Moving right along…

Need: Butter

I’m pretty sure that any ol’ butter or margarine will do. Not sure about the vegetable spreads, but that’s an experiment that one of you readers will have to undertake.

Need: Jello

Any ol’ flavor of Jello will do. I used strawberry. Big surprise, right?

Don’t Need: Sugar

That one recipe that I found said to add sugar. Jello is all sugar, so I just trusted my friend’s version and did not add sugar.

Bake

When in doubt, I always use 350 degrees fahrenheit. I was in doubt. I didn’t time it either, so I’m not sure how long it took for the Jello to get crispy.

Eat

I tasted this when I had a sinus infection. I couldn’t taste my meals at the time, but I did taste this. For the taste to have broken through to my deadened taste buds just shows that you really don’t need sugar. The crispy parts are the best, and I would venture to say that there is no such thing as too thick when layering on the powder. In fact, don’t miss a spot on the bread.

Josh was not a fan. He said it was too sweet. (See?) The kids loved them and devoured them up and wanted me to make more on the spot. I didn’t, but I have made Jello Toast two times since. The snack reminds me of when I was seven or eight, a latchkey kid, coming home from school to an empty house, and scrounging up something to eat. I used to eat things like Swiss Miss hot chocolate powder, Kool-Aid powder, and Non-Dairy Creamer out of paper cup with a spoon. I’m fairly certain that Jello Toast was created by a latchkey kid who was allowed to turn on the oven.

What do you think? Wouldn’t it be great if someone would step forward with proof and tell how they created this simple and delicious snack? That’s a story I think I’d like to hear. Until then, I’ll just thank Arwen and give her credit for her brilliance. Thank you, Friend!

Posted on September 5th, 2010 by trish
Filed under: Haley Kids, Recipe