Since it’s October and Halloween is approaching, I thought it would be fun to present you with a series of seasonal treats. You may have noticed this in the last few weeks with the Butterscotch Bars, the Ribbon Candy Bars, the Family Favorite Gingersnaps, and the Applesauce Donuts. But you know, the saying is “trick or treat”, so it’s only fair if I present you with a very tricky sort of recipe.
This is not saying that the recipe is complicated to make. I’m not actually sure that it is.
It’s not tricky in the way that the ingredients are hard to come by. This recipe calls for things that you can find at any grocery store and even most gas stations. 
And I’m not going to tell you that this recipe is great and then it turns out like Egg Foo Yung. I’m not that kind of mean.
This is another one of those recipes that is a list of very simple ingredients that can go very, very wrong like it did for me.
Ok, so here’s the thing. In real life my job is communication. I make sure that people are not only in the same book, but also on the same page. I outline steps in a basic way realizing that the common sense and logic that seems obvious to me isn’t obvious to everyone else around me. It is all based on experience.
This is why I can easily take a recipe that is supposed to be cake and make something similar to the original intention of the cake. I have followed the process before. I’m familiar with the steps that go into it and I understand which combinations of ingredients and techniques will produce a light and flavorful cake. 
When confronted, however, with ingredients that are not as familiar to me, my experience fails me. My common sense is no longer common. My logic takes me as far as it can. I’m going to talk through my process so you can see how I got to my results. Help me find the flaws in my logic.
The ingredients are 2 3 oz packages of orange Jell-O, 2 cups of water, 1 pint of orange sherbet and 1 can of mandarin oranges, but substitute frozen orange juice if you have no sherbet. 
All Jell-O recipes call for the cook to dissolve the Jell-O in boiling water. I boiled the two cups of water, poured it over the Jell-O powder and stirred until the Jell-O dissolved into the water.
Next, I stirred the sherbet into the hot Jell-O juice. When that was mostly mixed, I added the can of drained oranges. I stirred it all together.
That’s when the questions started coming in. Was this supposed to go into the freezer or the refrigerator? Did the Jell-O have enough hold to firm melted sherbet? How could frozen orange juice impart similar flavor profiles as orange sherbet? Sherbet is sweet and creamy. Orange juice is acidic and stringent.
It seemed obvious that the frozen ingredients in the dessert implied that it belonged in the the freezer. So I froze it.
Thinking about this now, I realize that perhaps the ingredients were supposed to be layered. Clear Jell-O with oranges on top of frozen sherbet in a mold would be beautiful. Frozen orange juice still makes no sense. The idea of biting into a chunk of frozen orange juice gives me canker sores.
Perhaps this was all supposed to go in a pie shell?
I served it. We like oranges. We like dessert. Orange sherbet never lasts long at our house. We didn’t care for Orange Dessert. This sat in the freezer untouched after that first small serving. The texture was weird. The sum of the parts was greater than the whole.
If you have an idea of what I should’ve done to improve this recipe, please let me know.
The recipe:
Orange Dessert
2 3oz Packages Orange Jell-O
2 Cups Water
1 pt Orange Sherbet or 2 cans Frozen Orange Juice
1 can Mandarin Oranges
If you want these flavors without the confusion, try Fluffy Orange Salad and Old Movies.
