Give Your Holiday A Touch Of Nostalgia With Our 3-Ingredient Christmas Jell-O Balls Recipe

There are some classic Christmas dishes that manage to make it to the table year after year, like roast turkey or gingerbread cookies. On the other hand, there are certain vintage Christmas dishes that you hardly see anymore, like chestnut stuffing or cranberry fluff salad. We'd argue that these three-ingredient Christmas Jell-O balls — brought to us by recipe developer Julianne De Witt — fall somewhere in the middle ground. They're not exactly something you're going to see at every holiday party, but they definitely have a certain nostalgic feel that's oh-so fitting for the holiday season.

These Jell-O balls also happen to be pretty, celebratory, and taste pretty darn good as well. "These three-ingredient Jello-O balls are a festive, quick, no-bake treat," De Witt describes. "They're soft, sweet, and chewy, and are made by mixing shredded coconut with condensed milk and vibrant red (I used strawberry) and green (lime) Jell-O powders." The result is a uniquely textured little treat that has a little crunch and a lot of flavor from the coconut, and one that puts crowd-pleasing Jell-O to use in a fun and inventive way. De Witt notes that these Christmas Jell-O balls would be great for a cookie exchange, for gifting, or for a positively festive and retro holiday party. 

You'll just need a handful of pantry essentials to make the Christmas magic happen here: Jell-O packets, sweetened condensed milk, and sweetened shredded coconut. For the Jell-O, you can use any flavor you want, but De Witt specifically went with strawberry and lime flavors so as to hone in on those red and green Christmas colors.

Add the red and green Jell-O powder to separate medium-sized bowls.

Add 2 cups of coconut to each bowl.

Add ½ cup of condensed milk to each bowl.

Mix well using a wooden spoon or your hands. Cover the bowls and chill for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

Using a small cookie scoop, scoop the mixture onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

Roll each mound into a ball.

Roll each ball in the remaining coconut.

Place the balls back on the parchment then refrigerate for 1 hour to set.

Serve the Jell-O balls.

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Though this easy recipe may only require three ingredients and absolutely no baking or cooking, there are still a few issues you might run into along the way, for which De Witt has some best-practice tips. For starters, you'll want to make sure that the Jell-O dough is the right consistency before you try rolling it into balls. "The dough should be soft and malleable," De Witt says. If you find that your dough is too wet, it won't easily form into a ball shape, so you should add a little more coconut. On the other hand, the texture won't be quite right if the dough is too dry, so add a little more condensed milk in that case. 

Next, tempting as it may be, you don't want to skip that 30-minute chilling session before rolling the Jell-O into balls. "Chilling makes it easy to scoop, and it's less likely to stick to your hands when rolling," De Witt explains. And, once it comes time to roll the dough into balls, you don't strictly need to use a cookie scoop to do so, but it really is a useful tool to ensure that the portions will all be even. If you don't have a scoop, you could simply use a tablespoon (with each ball consisting of 1 to 2 tablespoons of dough), or even weigh out the dough so that each and every ball is the exact same size. 

The simplicity of this recipe makes it a winner, especially considering that the three required ingredients are easy-to-source pantry staples. That said, there is plenty of room to switch up this recipe and add more ingredients should you so choose to. For starters, we've already touched on the fact that you can use different Jell-O flavors — opting for something like cherry or cranberry Jell-O would make easy swaps for the red, offering up a similarly Christmassy color while still tasting just as good as strawberry. 

An easy way to amp up both the texture and flavor of the Jell-O balls would be to add some mix-ins. For the red ones, De Witt recommends dried cranberries, whereas chopped pistachios would work well in the green mix. Another option for a non-textural add-in would be a little bit of flavor extract, and both almond and rum extract would be delicious choices. Finally, if you'd like your Jell-O balls a little less sweet, De Witt recommends using unsweetened shredded coconut so as to reduce the sugar content just a little bit.

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