Jello Shots!

My wife found an Instructable that took fruit and made jello shots using the rind instead of those little plastic cups. She posted the picture she found on Facebook and my brother told her that he wanted them for his daughter's graduation party. Mind you, it was his high school daughter's graduation party. However, the event was mostly for the family and friends, so there were to be mostly adults at the event.

Looking at the above picture, we had several different types of shots available. They are:
Strawberries filled with strawberry jello with creme de banana liquer (Awesome!)
Orange rinds with orange jello and orange rum
Lemon rind with lemon jello and Absolut Citron vodka
Lime rind with lime jello and tequilla(funny story behind this one)
Cucumber slices with watermelon jello and Absolut Currant vodka

The orange, lemon, and strawberries were my favorites. The strawberries disappeared first. To make the citrus ones, you have to cut the fruit in half, clean out the flesh and fill the little bowls with the jello mixture. Once they set up, I turned them over and used an electric knife to cut them into wedges. I tried other knives first, but they didn't cut well enough. The electric knife cut through them like butter. We used the flesh from the lemons and limes in smoothies, to there was no waste. Same for the strawberries. The lime flesh got tossed, because I don't have much use for lime. I don't recommend the limes because they are such a royal pain to clean out. It just isn't worth the effort. As for the limes, I wanted to make margarita-type jello shots. Combing through the liquor cabinet, we didn't have any tequilla. I called a neighbor who I figured would have some and said that I was making a recipe and that I needed to borrow a cup of tequilla. Believe it or not, I don't think they thought I was serious. Once I didn't break out into some sort of joke, they realized I was serious and that I realy did want tequilla. In return, I gave them a couple of each type of shot to try. I think it was a fair trade.

The cucumbers were fairly easy. I peeled the cucumbers and scooped out the seeds. I then filled the little boats with the jello mixture and let it set. After that, I sliced them and they looked like little watermelon halves.
The strawberries were fairly challenging. It's tough to scoop them out and not pierce the sides, but still allow enough room to provide enough jello to be of any use. You also have to slice a little bit off of the tip of the strawberry so it will sit up straight. If you do that, many of them are fairly hollow, so you'll have a hole in the bottom. If that happens, all of the jello will leak out. We found that out the hard way. I took some of the strawberry debris from cleaning them out and stuffed it in the bottom to plug the hole. That worked well enough. Another idea is to dip the bottom of the strawberry in chocolate before filling them with jello. Mmmm...