These viral videos that circulate from sites such as Tasty and Buzzfeed normally disgust me. They take a complicated process (like making churro dough) down to two minutes and it always comes out perfect.While I am a firm believer that cooking can and should be easy and fun these videos are fairly unrealistic. What irks me more is people that flood my timeline with the videos, without any photos of things they have made. (Probably because they tried and failed miserably.)

However, as I was working wasting time on facebook this elevated take on the oh so classy Jell-O shot intrigued me.

Jell-O shots inside watermelon!? This is sorcery I had to try. I set out to make them for my best friend’s BBQ.

The video seemed easy enough and the idea excited me. I just knew I would be the coolest person at the party walking in with Jell-O watermelon. I hate vodka so I changed the liquor to Rose and champagne. I also quickly realized my watermelon was too big for the recipe so I changed the proportions to one recipe and a half. (3 boxes jell-o, 6 packs of gelatin, 3 cups of hot water, 3 cups of liquor)

 

Because my life is not quite as neat as these videos my watermelon did not come out perfectly, but it was still awesome. Below are my cheater codes on how to make the recipe in real life.

1. Knox gelatin is hard to dissolve! You may end up with little chunks of not dissolved gelatin, in which case strain the entire mixture before adding the liquor.

   

2. If changing the proportions of the recipe and you’re unsure of how much Knox gelatin to add, always add more.
3. This does not transport well, especially in heat. It’s something you should take out and enjoy immediately.
4. Apparently everyone eats Jell-O Memorial Day weekend, so be prepared to have to go to two stores for red Jell-O.
5. Scooping out the watermelon takes some time and you shouldn’t wear a white shirt.
6. Don’t add extra liquor! As tempted, as you may be to make it stronger remember these are mainly for novelty; no one wants to eat a ton of Jell-O besides maybe a child.
7. Keep these away from children.

Of course I couldn’t just stop with watermelon, I wanted to try oranges too.
I used three hollowed oranges, pineapple Jell-O, and half of the proportions (1 box jell-o, 2 packs of gelatin, 1 cup boiling water, 1 cup whiskey).These came out way better than the watermelon, they really set. I want to try limes and tequila next! The best thing is that you can really get creative with the base recipe switching fruits, liquors and Jell-O flavors. Try it out! Let me know what combinations you come up with!