In Marguerite’s cookbook, this Sunburst Gelatin Dessert is titled “Sunburst Salad.” In fact, there are a lot of recipes titled “salad” in her cookbook, none of which ever include anything close to lettuce. I’d say 99% of the recipes with the word “salad” in the title involve gelatin and a trove of other bad-for-your-waistline-good-for-your-soul ingredients. After flipping through the book many times, only one salad actually involving lettuce was found.

That being said, this “salad” was delicious.

Here is what Marguerite had to say:

An entire pint of ice cream that I didn’t get to eat on it’s own is a tragedy, but this gelatin dessert was so delicious, so I’ll cope. The fruit made it feel healthy and the ice cream gave the gelatin a very mousse-y texture. Very summery, very yum.

According to Aaron’s mother (Marguerite’s daughter), this was a popular bridge club snack. Aaron remembers seeing this and similar desserts at many family affairs as well. According to him, she would make this gelatin dessert for the adults and then make plain Jello for the kids. Because a 7 year old Aaron only wanted plain cherry Jello and LEGOs. Actually, that’s all 28 year old Aaron wants…

We couldn’t find any apricot gelatin, so we subbed peach flavored instead. Aaron’s not a fan of peach, but he didn’t really mind it with all the other fun stuff thrown in.

This was one of those recipes that had a lot of variations in her book, many of which we’ll be trying some other time on this blog. By “variations” I mean “other salads.” It also was something I could actually see us making and enjoying on a regular basis and would be a great thing to bring to a party. Seriously, I’m shocked none of our friends invite us over just to make them all the delicious things we share on this blog.