Cute parfaits are really popular among girls in Japan and I look forward to them every summer when I visit. I wanted to make one that was inspired by my love of surfing and the ocean. This parfait has everything that a Japanese parfait has like whipped cream, ice cream, fruit, and cute decorations, but it also has an extra special treat. There is blue hawaii flavored jello with a sandy candy bottom and a tropical fish.

What I love about this parfait are the different flavors. The cold ice cream, chewy cookies, and the jello mixed with candy. This may look complicated, but it is actually easy to put together and you can customize it yourself with different flavors of ice cream and jello, and different decorations.

This recipe makes 3 parfaits.

Step 1: Ingredients

Cookies

1/2 cup butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 cup all-purpose flour

Gelatin

1 cup apple juice
3 tablespoons blue hawaii syrup (for shaved ice)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 pack of gelatin
2 tablespoons sugar

For the Gelatin

maraschino cherries
Japanese ramune and konpeito candies (you can find them at any Japanese market or you can use any little candy)
3 parfait or wine glasses

Decorations

Vanilla ice cream
honeydew melon
pineapple
fake flowers
parasol picks
silver sprinkles
1 8 oz carton whipping cream
chocolate roll cookies
2 tablespoons sugar
cookies (in instructions)

Step 2: Seashell Cookies

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Melt the butter.

3. Mix together the brown sugar and butter in a bowl.

4. Lightly beat the egg and add it in.

5. Add in the vanilla extract and whisk.

6. Add in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and mix it all together.

7. You can either bake the cookies in silicone molds or in a pan and use cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. Bake for about 20 minutes.

Step 3: Gelatin

1. Measure out the apple juice and put 2 tablespoons into a separate bowl.

2. Put a pack of gelatin into the separate apple juice.

3. Heat up the apple juice without the gelatin in a small saucepan until it is hot but not boiling and turn off the heat.

4. Add the apple juice with the gelatin to the hot apple juice and mix well.

5. Add in the blue hawaii syrup, lemon juice, and sugar and mix until the sugar is dissolved.

6. Put the saucepan in a large bowl with ice to cool the mixture down.

Step 4: First Layer

1. Roughly crush both of the candies using a mortal and pestle. You can also put them in a ziplock and hit with wooden stick or mallet.

2. Put the candies at the bottom of the glasses.

3. Pour some gelatin into the glasses, but don't fill them up. Fill them to about the point where you want you're fish to go later, about a third of the way up the glass, depending on the shape of the glass. You're going to want to use about half your gelatin mixture in this step.

4. Put them in the refrigerator and wait for it to firm up, about an hour or two.

Step 5: Cherry Fishies

1. Slice a side off one of the cherries. Then cut a triangle out of the back of the piece you sliced off. This is the tail of the fish.

2. Take another cherry and use a straw to poke out the seed and make a hole for the tail to go in.

3. Put the tail into the other cherry and then you have your fish! Do the same for the other 2 fish.

Step 6: Floating the Fish

1. Once the gelatin is firmed up, put the cherry fish on top. You should put the fish close to the side of the glass so that you can see them.

2. Pour in more gelatin. You don't want to fill the glasses up all the way because you need space to put the whipped cream and ice cream later on.

3. The fish may float up to the top. If they do, you can put them in the fridge for a little bit and wait for it to firm up slightly. Then you can push the fish down and they should stay floating in the middle of the glass.

4. Leave them in the fridge and wait for them to firm up completely.

Step 7: Whipped Cream

1. Pour the whipping cream into a large bowl.

2. Add the sugar.

3. Whip the cream until it holds firm peaks when you lift up the whisk or mixer. It is easiest to use an electric hand mixer to whip it, but you can also whip it by hand. Make sure not to over whip the cream.

4. Once the cream is whipped put it into a piping bag to decorate the parfait later.

Step 8: Decorating

1. Pipe one thin layer of whipped cream on top of the gelatin. You can also spoon the whipped cream on the gelatin of you don't have a piping bag.

2. Put two scoops of ice cream on top.

3. Decorate the parfait how you want! Put the cookies you made earlier on top, some fruit, sprinkles, a flower, umbrella, whatever you want!

4. Then eat it before it melts! :)