Spiked Challange! - Champagne Jello

I was excited but a little apprehensive when I first saw the Spiked! Challenge announced. I love champagne but hadn't tried cooking with it. My first idea was to bake a cake with the champagne incorporated after thinking through it more, I decided that I wanted to try something where the fizzy-ness of the champagne could come through. I finally decided on reworking one of my jell-o recipes to incorporate fizzy yummyness (yes, that is a real description).

Ingredients:

• 8 packets unflavored gelatin
• 4 cups water
• 1 container berry juice concentrate (just use the concentrate, do not add water)
• 2 cups champagne (to make this kid friendly, use another container of juice concentrate instead)
• 2 cans crushed pineapple
• 4 sliced bananas
• 2 cups mixed berries

 Directions:

• In a sauce pan, combine the water and unflavored gelatin.  Stir until the gelatin has dissolved into the water.  Do not bring water to a boil
• In another container, mix together all of the other ingredients.
• Pour the water and gelatin mixture into the container with the other ingredients.  Stir until well integrated.
• Put in the fridge to let harden 4-6 hours or overnight is best.
•  Serve and Enjoy!

This recipe is pretty forgiving.  Any fruit/juice combo that you want could be used.  During the summer, I like to use whatever fresh fruit I have available.  For today's recipe, I used frozen bananas and berries.

If this were an episode of Chopped, the judges would have criticized the lack of champagne taste. It was hard to make out the champagne flavor; however, I'm also on the losing side of fighting a cold and my taste-buds aren't quite all there.  I probably will try this again, but I would add more champagne next time; maybe the entire bottle.  I've also learned that it is hard to take pretty pictures of jell-o once it is out of the container.