Easier and just as tasty in a regular ol' bowl and easier to wash. Ice cream is such a favorite of mine but to keep my weight in the healthy range, I only splurge on it a couple times a year at most. Glad to know there are some folks who will want my parfait glasses and pick up the parfait gauntlet after I retire!

Nicely done, pinkmountain! That goes for the parfaits and your write up. :-)

A magazine from the 1950s would surely have loved to publish your photo in it's FOOD section.

Some things you do just once as a learning experience. As you said, you have the picture. And a very pretty picture it is too. Your mom's glasses have a lovely shape.

There are other delicious parfaits besides Jell-o. When I need a quickie dessert and don't have much of any one thing, I'll make a deconstructed parfait in a salad bowl to be spooned into dessert bowls. Layers of a bit of ice cream, berries or other fleshy fruit, whipped cream, cookie sand (i.e., crumbled up cookies). (I think if one didn't have some random cookies, one could use panko toasted with a dusting of sugar and spice.) It's really good, Parfait (perfect), in fact.

Jello used to make a kind of instant parfait that would separate into layers after it was poured into the parfait glasses. It was not all that good. I prefer to make a chocolate mousse, and sometimes I will make it with a Bavarian cream and layer those together. I may have a single parfait glass, but I do not have room to store any more of them, and I rarely make desserts anymore.

Funny you should mention that Lars, my friends commented on that Jello this weekend, how they remembered it. Also as it not being particularly good . . .

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE mousses, ice cream, puddings, etc. but just so rarely can afford the time and calories to indulge. And if I do ever make any of those things, I will happily serve them in bowls that are easier to fill and clean. I have some clear depression glass ones too.

There are some things from my youth and my Mom's sophistication and glamour that I miss and would like to see again, but these parfait glasses ended up not being one of them. She never used them later on in life I suspect for much the same reasons as me.

I haven't yet been able to get rid of the glasses my folks served frozen daquiris in, but maybe my next party . . . at the time my folks made those we had an ice crusher, of all things . . . Not sure what happened to that, perhaps a garage sale . . . but hubs has a super turbo blender . . . Drinking is another thing I'm not able to do much of anymore. I have a chronic bladder condition that gets irritated if I drink too much. Then I'm up all night going to the bathroom multiple times.

I believe it was called Jello 123, I think it used egg white or albumin to make the layers separate (and give it the less than terrific taste), or at least that's what I seem to recall reading at some point.

Your parfaits are very pretty, pinkmountain!

Very pretty, L. Your Mom would be proud.

I'm with you, though, I want to actually use the things that I keep because they make me smile. If I don't use them, then what's the point? You have other beautiful things that belonged to your Mom, so if those parfait glasses will never be used because they are a pain, then off they go, so that other things can have that space.

As you know, I despise Jello and all things similar, they just feel so.....icky....and I just can't swallow them. If I were set on using those glasses I'd probably fill them with fruit salad and add a finger of shortbread or make homemade pudding, as you already mentioned. Heck, put the pudding in those frozen daquiri glasses. (grin)

I have a couple of boxes full of old Wexford glass. Tall iced tea glasses, short juice glasses, wide "on the rocks" glasses, glasses with stems, matching bowls, various pitchers, all kinds of pieces. I just like the way they feel. (shrug) So I put mousse in the sherry glasses and ice cream in the "rocks" glasses and water in the iced tea glasses and I use a couple of the cream pitchers for pancake toppings like blueberry syrup. The rest of the family thinks I'm crazy, but if I break a glass I just hike out to the garage and fish out another one. What I'm getting at is that I like them, and I use them, so I keep them. I don't really have storage space to keep things that won't get used, and I don't think you do either. Keep the things you love and use and every thing else is expendable.

Annie

Pretty glasses, but I'm with sheilajoyce on the vanilla ice cream and creme de menthe! It's so good and so simple. I wish I would remember it when I have a dinner party. :)

The worst thing for me is I have my Mom's and Grandmother's tea sets, and I can no longer drink tea. Plus a couple of my own tea sets. It is my favorite beverage. I'm thinking of opening a tea house just so I can indulge in my love of tea accoutrements. I had some old friends over for tea a couple of weeks ago, so happy to have finally been able to use the custom-made, forget-me-not teapot my friend sent all the way from Scotland for a wedding gift.

Those are lovely parfait glasses. A good soaking and a bottle brush is great for cleaning the curve in there.

Way I was taught to fill them was that whipped topping/mousse stuff is (or should be) solid enough to go into a piping bag and that's used for the first layer- you don't need to use a tip though you can, the bag works as a funnel you can apply filling pressure to that can reach to the bottom of the glass. Way quicker than funnels, and less messy than spooning stuff in then cleaning the glass top for the next layer.

Mix the top layer jello in a measuring cup since it has a pouring lip, and allow to cool to room temp to pour on top of the whipped layer.

I don't use parfait glasses- though sometimes I've used other pretty glasses. I have used 12 oz quilted canning jars for this sort of thing. I like using canning jars because then I can put a lid on the glass while they are chilling in the fridge, and canning jars stack up and take less space than the pretty parfait glasses. And are easier to clean and transport to a picnic, lol.

I also don't do parfaits much because we are not terribly fond of sweets in our house in general. Usually just some jello with fruit in it is plenty of a sweet dessert.

I would have loved being served anything in parfait glasses in my youth 60 years ago. Now that I am older and a lot less prone to la-te-dah I would think anyone serving in these relics today had a great aunt or some such that were bequeathed to them (as you were). Today my grands would think that such extravagances would signal some "return to the good ol' days" that really didn't even exist in our family's modest life (or even the average one's life) - just the veneer of them". The average person did not have such things and didn't need them, though on some level they did truly want them. A very long time ago I sold my (grandmother/aunt/mother's silver serving pieces to a jeweler for "melt". Even in their youth the average family tried to be part of the aristocracy while living in their plain ol' workaday households. I would also venture to say that in today's aristocracy this kind of la-te-dah still isn't served at dinner anywhere near like they did then. That age is long past and reality has set in - functionality is the norm, as I believe it should be. Chuck the glasses and the jello in them.

It's wonderful, @l pinkmountain , that you took the time and made the effort to use the parfait glasses one last time before you dispose of them. Now, you have a memory of what your mother might have experienced and the picture to prove it!

Each to his own I guess, but I’m a sucker for something served in specialty dishes/glassware or with unusual utensils. Now if I only used something once a decade and more out of obligation than anything, it’d be worth reconsidering the space I‘m allowing it to take up.

But then, I’m a softie for nostalgia and family pieces. I can’t tell you how many times my heart has sank and I’ve felt sick learning of something that my parents got rid of without asking me first. Truth be told though they’re probably doing me a huge favor!

I was just reading the NYtime story on this all day project; lemon buttermilk parfaits.

I've been told before that my West Coast upbringing was Jell-o deficient, though I remember lots of Jell-o being around. Parfaits remained about cream and fruit and crunchies and never made the Jell-o transition. I mean, I'm sure some people made them, but not enough so that people thought "Jell-o" when they heard "parfait". Ice cream is a big deal here, year round, so ice cream parfaits were the norm, but just fruit, whipped cream and some kind of crumble wasn't uncommon. I don't know if I've ever eaten a Jell-o parfait.

I'm wondering how parfaits made with Jell-o became the standard that seems the case the way some of you are talking, I assume in the Midwest. Did people just like Jell-o that much? It couldn't have been price. We had sugar processing factories here in California, along with the strong dairy industry, and I think dairy is big in the Midwest too. But, I guess Jell-o was probably only made in a few places and shipped, so the local price of sugar wouldn't necessarily be important. Do any of you know?

Oh, the good ole days of Jello layers and Jello-1-2-3!

My father said fresh raspberry seeds made his teeth hurt, so my mother made raspberry Jello with only half the prescribed amount of cold water, which resulted in a thicker Jello with more concentrated flavor. Adding a bit of light cream reminded him of eating berries and cream. ... I still use less cold water when making Jello (even for sick tummies), and would also do it *if* making Jello parfaits.

In a 1950s home economics class I learned that Jello, an incomplete protein on its own, was made complete by adding a milk product, which may help explain seeing the two together so often.

And then there were the "congealed" salads and special Tupperware molds. Oh, my!

When DD was little we had parfaits a lot, but I rarely set the jello/ mousse in the glass. I simply made batches of the ingredients (fruit, jello, icecream, mousse, whatever) and dolloped spoonsful into the glasses in succession without worrying whether it was even or flat or anything. It looked pretty enough and tasted good.

Traffic light jello was for kids' parties (green layer in the bottom of the cup, then yellow layer, then red layer) and was easily enough done. We also used to make two layer jello cups for the school canteen I ran and again they were pretty easy. The trick is to make all the jello at the same time in measuring jugs for easy pouring, then leave the colours you aren't using yet on the kitchen counter so they don't set, while the setting jello is in the fridge.

I never heard of a parfait that was a molded dessert in a glass. parfait is layered....and really very easy....the glass makes it special....just spoon some berries, ice cream or vanilla pudding into a glass add more berries and a layer of whipped cream....maybe but some crumbs in between layers....but its really ice cream and topping in a tall glass. I have used red wine glasses for parfait because I don't have any "real" parfait glasses....really it's an easy dessert.

We never had the 1-2-3 (bad taste) but we got around it by making layered jello, one color at a time, and then adding another layer, and finishing it off with some sort of whipped topping or tangy mayonnaise ... now that was good. I still like the jellos with the fruit in them, but hey, I like fruitcakes too ... my address is ....

Like Plllog and LindaC, parfaits here were not made of jelly, they were layers of whipped cream and fruit, maybe crumbled cookies, but usually it was ice cream with different toppings. It was a big, big, BIG deal to get a Dairy Queen parfait, layers of ice cream and topping in a plastic parfait glass and you got to keep the glass and fill it with pretty stones or marbles or painted pine cones or potpourri...

I loved them, and I remember actually being allowed to have them twice. Other times I would share one with my sister, but I couldn't often talk her into that, she was a lover of the ever popular "dip top".

Annie

Y'alls idea of "not a big deal" is way more than mine. So easy, just layer pudding, fruit, whipped cream . . . like I would even have all three together in the same place at the same time?? :)

I'm dead lazy and only cook because I like to eat, not because I like to layer. I'd love to come visit you and have parfaits by the pool though! But I can't even eat sweets anymore, I can barely keep from being overweight just eating three square (small) meals.

I'm like FOAS though, in love with the idea of eating something in a fancy serving dish, with fancy utensils and fancy linens at a fancy table. Not making it, just eating it! And having the time and income to indulge in such fantasies. Mom and I went to a haughty high-end French restaurant once in Chicago . . . what a disappointment. Rude servers and food was ho hum. Fancy but not fun, a total let down.

And then there's the nostalgia effect. I am much more of a peasant than my mother though. If I'm going to fuss, it will be a fancy preserve or type of home-made bread. I have fancy pressed glass jam jars. And as Annie mentions, I still have plenty of frou frou stuff, tea stuff in particular. I am really starting to fantasize a lot about running a tea house . . .

[Hey LP - Sent you a note the other day at the email address I have from a while back. Please met me know if that got to you. Thanks!]

FOAS I didn't get it. I changed e-mail carriers when I moved to the Midwest. I had all my old e-mails saved but then my computer crashed. Ironically, I managed to recover all my documents but never thought to ask them to recover the saved e-mails, as they were in a different folder from the rest of my documents. So I lost those, which had a lot of my e-mail addresses. I'm trying to be "cloud based" now, because of that and some other things, but have a difficult time keeping my cloud database up to date. I might have your e-mail address saved somewhere, or I might be able to get it from someone. Let me take a look and see what I can do.

I'd give anything for a taste of one of my mother's jello molds. But if I want one I'd have to make it myself. Not in parfait glasses but in a ring mold. Yes, labour intensive, many layers. a layer with pineapple & walnut, a layer with cottage cheese, apples, I don't remember. Honestly, it was delicious, filling enough to be called "lunch." Yes, the jello was colours, maybe dyes? -- not acceptable now? Unhealthy. I don't know but I would never make fun of jello molds. One of these days I'll buckle down and try to recreate it. How she did it I'll never know -- it was love.

I have made chocolate pudding parfaits with layered whipped cream and crumbled oreo cookies. They are my son's favorite. I haven't made them in ages. I never did like the jello ones.

Recreating a family favorite can be tricky, Bleublue2. We have a couple of family favorite Jell-o molds too. I did manage to recreate one but made the mistake of feeding it to friends who didn't grow up with it. They were polite. I wish I knew my auntie's favorite. I can't even imagine what was in it but everybody loved it, even strangers. Good luck with your layered mold!

I have a whole set of molds too! That's what I decided, if I ever want to make a fancy gelatin dish, I am going to do it all at once, in a mold. I guess I should put "salmon mousse" on my list of dishes I would like to try. And a carrot pineapple salad with orange Jello. I'm not a gelatin snob, that's for sure. Or a cake mix snob or a canned soup snob or a frozen ravioli snob. Just call me Sandra Lee!

I want to mention that if you put cottage cheese in the red jello it turns out pink opaque, not transparent. Simply beautiful. I'm going to ask my sister if she remembers the other layers. My mother would do 6 or 7 layers. The other thing she did was Torte which was also a layered "cake" that required patience, slicing the layers thinner and putting various tasty things between them. you can tell I never paid attention -- I, unfortunately, didn't have much curiosity in the kitchen.

Lpink, do you need a recipe for salmon mold? My mother used to make it for after funerals.