How to Make a Delicious Jello Fruit Salad

This Jello Fruit Salad is based upon one of hippie_mama's grandmother's recipes. It is very likely the only good jello-food combo that came from the 50's.. Orange Jello and Carrots anyone? Not me.

We make this Jello Fruit Salad for major holidays, family gatherings, parties of all types, and never have any to bring back home with us.

It's easy, tastes great, and people love it.

Ingredients

• 4 boxes of jello, 2 each of 1 flavor (you can use whatever flavors you want, but we normally stick with flavors that complement the fruit we are using)
• Sour Cream
• 1 large package of FRESH Strawberries (dont be lazy and use frozen, fresh strawberries are what makes this fruit salad the best)
• 3-5 Bananas
• Crushed Pineapple
• Water

Utensils

• Pan for Boiling Water
• Measuring Cup
• 1-2 Bowls for Mixing the Jello and Water
• Glass Pan or Bowl for the Jello Fruit Salad itself

The First Layer is the crushed pineapple layer.

So first, you need to decide on what flavor of jello you are going to use to suspend the pineapple in. We have used just about every flavor you can think of over the years, from strawberry and green apple, to blue raspberry and orange.

Once you have decided on the jello flavor, make it with half the water the box calls for because you are wanting your jello to be nice and firm.

If the box calls for 1 cup of water, use half a cup.

If you are doing a large batch, essentially a double batch like we do, you would use 1 cup of water total.

Make sure to use good water, such as the water from a Brita Water Filter (see this instructable on how to refill your own Brita Water Filters yourself).

Once the water has been boiled and added to the jello powder and mixed as seen below in the first 2 pictures, add in ice to quick cool the jello. We normally use 1 cup of ice cubes or crushed ice. Once the ice is no longer cracking in the heat and the jello liquid has thickened, take out any chunks of ice that havent melted completely.

This not only reduced the overall time needed to make the jello, it also adds a bit more water to the mixture.

At this point, open up the can of pineapple, and drain the liquid. You dont want to add this in to the jello, so you can do what you want with this liquid, I normally drink it at this stage.

Put the pineapple into the glass container you are going to use and add the jello. Stir it to get a good mixture.

Then refrigerate until nice and firm.

Once the first layer has firmed up, get out the Sour Cream and a spoon.

We use about 8 ounces of sour cream for the middle.

Spread out the sour cream across the top completely.

Now, slice up a few bananas, around 5 or so, and lay them out on top of the sour cream.

Return the container back to the refrigerator to keep it cool and firm.

Now decide on the flavor of jello you are going to use with the strawberries. We normally use strawberry jello, but even blue raspberry or orange tastes good we have found.

Follow steps 2 and 3 on the making of the top layer's jello.

Since you will be adding the warm jello to the rest of the jello fruit salad, we normally take this time to cut up the strawberries to allow for the jello to cool as much as possible.

Grab your strawberries, rinse them, and slice them up into chunks.

Add them on top of the bananas.

Take your jello liquid and spoon it gently on top of the cut strawberries.

You dont want to just pour it, because that can not only be messy, but it can also mess up the sour cream layer.

Once you have spooned all of the jello liquid, place in the refrigerator for a few hours to firm up completely.

Time to enjoy not only how pretty this layered jello fruit salad is, but also time to enjoy how tasty it is!