OBSESSIONS18 AUGUST 2020
UELED BY GELATIN, syringes, and lots of patience,
New York City–based pastry chef Jena Derman
made her first Jell-O cake after falling down a
YouTube rabbit hole while looking for something
unique to bake for a friend’s 35th birthday. “It’s
both high art and as low as you can go,” she notes of her craft.
She now runs a business selling these jiggly showstoppers for
special events and weddings, and she likens the process of
making gelatin cakes, which are popular in Thailand, Vietnam,Malaysia, and Mexico, to liposuction. Rather than employing
store-bought Jell-O, Derman makes her own using sheet gelatin
and organic fruit purees for color. She uses milk jelly, or gelatin
mixed with sweetened condensed milk, for the flowers, which
helps give them their opacity. To shape the petals, she injects the
milk jelly into a clear gelatin–and–coconut water base with a
syringe through a metal leaf pastry tip. And, just in case you were
wondering if these cakes could possibly taste as good as they
look, we promise they do.FSee more of Derman’s delicious work
on Instagram @sidehustlecakes.