How to Fill a Bathtub with Jell-O

10. November, 2005 | by John Moroney | food-drink

Note: While the word “Jell-O” does appear in several dictionaries, it is always defined firstly as “Jell-O, a trademark of the Kraft company and it’s family of fine products.”

At Bitch Kitty Racing we are dedicated to preserving other’s rights and royalties, in very much the same way that we would like our own preserved, in very much the same way we would like to see yours preserved. Let us therefore note that any time the word Jell-O is used, the above definition is implied. Let us also assume that Kraft has a sense of humor and fun. Lastly, we would like to note that innovators in any field have their trademarked names fall into everyday usage to describe a product, e.g. Hoover, Kleenex, Xerox, or Jell-O.

Jell-O is a wonderful substance. Slippery yet sticky, cold yet warming, firm yet yielding. Most people “of a certain age” have a memory of a punk rock party complete with Barbie dolls in a vat of Jell-O. Most people have tried the gooey intoxicant know as the Jell-O shooter. Most people know about Jell-O wrestling, though perhaps far fewer have participated.

We here at Bitch Kitty Racing have often longed for our own private Jell-O bath. Being the fun people we know you are, we thought you might like to join in and learn how to create a date night to remember.

This recipe is for thirty-eight gallons of Jell-O which will set up at room temperature. We would also like to point out that for the sake of authenticity we used Jell-O brand, lime flavor. We used a real bathtub in a really tiny city apartment to make sure this all works in the real world. Please excuse our English measurement system; the metric system is so easy we thought it might be condescending to use it.

Jell-O is little more than dyed sugar in suspension, sticks to bloody everything, is very difficult to clean up once it dries, and will stain everything it touches including: skin, hair, the floors, the walls, the stove, the bathtub itself, etc. This is a very messy business, so be prepared for immediate cleanup while the Jell-O is still wet. In the tub, the Jell-O will dissolve by merely running hot water over it straight from the tap. Out of the tub, ye Gods!

Please be aware that this article is for entertainment purposes only, and that anyone foolish enough to try this might actually die slowly and painfully from serious injuries, may break bones or crack skulls, rip tendons or ligaments, etc. Seriously, Jell-O creates very slippery conditions, so be careful.

Before you begin, estimate how much powdered Jell-O you will need. We estimated by swinging a dead cat around in the bathroom and dancing in circles backwards with a tape measure to arrive at the volume formula of: (length of tub) X (width of tub) X (depth of tub) = volume in cubic inches, then converted to gallons using chicken blood in a silver basin under a full moon. 1,000 cubic inches is about 4 1/3 gallons. For the rest of the world, a simple conversion from cubic centimeters to liters will suffice. 24 ounces of powdered Jell-O makes one gallon of delicious dessert. For this project we used slightly less water to result in a thicker product we hoped would set at room temperature.

For a forty gallon tub, we used:

  • Forty-four 24 ounce packages of Jell-O
  • Fifteen gallons of ice

To prepare the tub we poured in all fifteen gallons of ice, then added about five gallons of cold water. To this mixture we would add our Jell-O. It was hoped that would could dissolve at least ten packets of Jell-O in one gallon of boiling water to keep the heat out of the mixture.

We used a large Dutch oven to boil one gallon of water, to which we added one packet. We poured the mixture into a five gallon plastic bucket and stirred until dissolved, then noticed the mixture looked pretty thin.

We kept adding Jell-O until the mixture became like syrup, about twelve packets. The addition of more boiling water kept the sugary deliciousness from becoming granular, yet the heat dissipated rapidly. Before we added it to the tub we allowed it to cool enough to insert hands. It had a consistency of exceptionally viscous syrup, but Jell-O will not set without cooling and time. We poured that bucket of beautiful iridescent goo into the tub and stirred furiously.

We did this three more times until all the Jell-O was used and we had a total volume of about thirty-eight gallons. We stirred and stirred to make sure the mixture was homogeneous. The ice never fully melted.

The mixture reached it’s final form in just over one hour. It wasn’t as firm as Jell-O that has been allowed to set in the fridge for four hours, but it was definitely firm enough for our purposes. We skimmed off the ice and started to play. The Jell-O is much colder than one might expect, though why an ice bath would seem unexpectedly cold is a bit of a mystery to us. We then invited twenty of our closest friends and the Jell-O warmed up quite nicely.

Have fun!

Photo Shoot: Jell-O