Strawberry Margarita Jello Shots

A friend of mine alerted me to this video about how to make strawberry margarita jello shots and I figured they probably taste awful or they're too much work for not much in return. Since it's the holiday weekend, I figured it was a good excuse to give them a shot... see what I did there? Shot? Ahem...

Here what you'll need:
1. Strawberries (the more, the better!)
2. Strawberry jello
3. Tequila
4. Triple sec
5. An ice tray and a sharp knife
6. Kosher salt and lime (optional)

Start by boiling a cup of water and adding your strawberry jello.

Once the Jello powder has dissolved, take it off the heat and add 3/4 cup of tequila and 1/4 cup of triple sec (I used orange triple sec but you could use any flavor you want).

Now it's time to prepare your strawberries. Wash them and cut off the very bottom so they can stand straight up.

Cut out the stem and try to make the inside of the strawberry as hollow as possible. You have to be really careful or else you might accidentally cut a little hole in the bottom!

 Once your strawberry is ready, place it in an empty ice cube tray. Do this for all of your strawberries.

Pour the mixture from the pot into something with a spigit (like a measuring cup) and pour into each strawberry. I screwed up two strawberries but ended up with 24, which was perfect for my ice tray! Still, I recommend you have at least 3x the amount of strawberries or you're going to have a lot of leftover jello/tequila/triple sec mix!

Set in the fridge for 4 hours (or overnight, like I did). If you like, you can coat the rim of the strawberry with kosher salt but trust me, coming from someone who likes salt on their margaritas, you do NOT want to do it. The strawberries just aren't big enough and the salt overpowers the taste.

Speaking of taste, you think you can taste the tequila? Nope. Not at all. However, it's really less than half of a shot so that's probably why. So if you plan on getting drunk off of these, you'd have to eat a lot of strawberries and even then, you'd probably get sick of strawberries before you ever felt a buzz. Still, they're quite delicious and an excellent source of Vitamin C!

TOTAL COSTS: About $22 (if you don't have any of the ingredients - prices from Vons)
$3.99/lb. for strawberries
$.99 for jello
$11.10 for tequila
$6.29 for triple sec
Ice cube tray and knife already on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 20 minutes + overnight (but you could have them chill for 4 hours instead)
20 minutes to boil water and prep all the strawberries
Overnight to harden

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5
The only "difficult" things about this might be cutting the strawberries so you don't have holes in the bottoms or sides and pouring the mixture inside the strawberries -- it'll get all over the ice cube tray, but that's what it's there for!

Homemade Single Serve Ice Cream in 5 Minutes!

When I was 15, my first job was at an ice cream store called, "Treat Street." Some of my friends worked there, I loved ice cream, and it was air conditioned in the summer -- what more could you want? Ever since then, I've had a slight addiction to ice cream. I've never made it myself (why make it when there's Ben & Jerry's in the world?) but when I saw this post from DoItDarling, it seemed too good to pass up. C'mon, ice cream in 5 minutes? I put it to the test.



To make these you'll need:

1/2 cup of milk (cream or half and half work too)
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla (I made mine here)
6 Tablespoons of kosher salt
12-24 ice cubes
1 gallon-sized Ziploc bag
1 pint-sized (or sandwich-sized) Ziploc bag

Start by adding your milk to the pint or sandwich-sized Ziploc bag.

And then add your sugar and vanilla. If you want to make chocolate ice cream, now would be the time to add chocolate syrup and seal it up tight!

In your gallon-sized bag, add your kosher salt.

Stick the smaller bag with the milk, sugar, and vanilla inside the larger bag and add enough ice cubes to fill up half of the bag in ice (I used 24 ice cubes - 2 trays - and it worked out just fine).

Now seal up the bigger bag and shake vigorously for 5 minutes. Some tips?

   #1 - Wear oven mitts. The bag is going to get cold and slippery because of the condensation

   #2 - Shake over the sink. During the last minute, my bag tore and I was shaking salty water everywhere!

After the 5 minutes are up, take out the small bag. From the outside, it might not look like ice cream...

But from the inside, you'll see it is! Ice cream for one, please!

While I was adding the milk, sugar, and vanilla to the smaller bag, I also added some peppermint extract (1/2 teaspoon was way too much, by the way!) but it did give it a nice minty flavor. I also added some mini chocolate chips because who doesn't like a nice topping with their ice cream? I wouldn't say it's enough for two but it is just enough if you have a sweet tooth!

TOTAL COSTS: About $18.50 (if you don't have any of the ingredients, prices from Vons)

$2.29 for milk
$2.69 for sugar
$4.99 for store-bought vanilla
$3.49 for kosher salt
$2.99 for a box of gallon-sized Ziploc bags
$2.09 for a box of sandwich Ziploc bags
I would hope you have ice cubes in your freezer!

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 10 minutes 

5 minutes adding all the ingredients together

5 minutes of shaking the bag

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5

The shaking is a really good workout for your arms so if you're just getting out of the hospital or you did 100 pushups yesterday and you can't raise your arms above your head, this might not be the project for you. However, if you don't mind shakin' what your mama gave you, the ice cream is a nice treat after the workout you'll be getting!