Avoid This Jello-O Flavor With An Odd Smell And Bad Aftertaste

Jell-O should be a cool, light, and fruity treat for the summer. It's an easy dessert to make; you just boil water, add the mix, then cold water, and put it in the fridge to chill for eight to 24 hours. So when our reviewer was assigned to taste test 11 Jell-O flavors and rank them, it sounded like a walk in the park. They made each Jell-O, let it sit overnight, and polled their family in their quest for the best and worst Jell-Os. Sounds great, except for one flavor. Sadly, they all had to taste the Jell-O Zero Sugar Black Cherry flavor.

The smell should have been a warning. It smelled of cherry, which is to be expected, and an overpowering earthy aroma, which was an off-putting surprise. The taste was more of the same; the light cherry taste was overpowered by tart and earthy flavors. Unfortunately, it didn't stop once a bite was finished, as a lingering artificial sweetener and chemical flavor stuck around, uninvited. This is not a Jell-O for Jacques Pépin to plus up — we'll leave it at that.

Unfortunately, the second-worst flavor was the standard version of the Jell-O Black Cherry. Thankfully, it didn't leave behind an uninvited chemical aftertaste. It started off well, with a sweet cherry smell, but the fun ended there. It was more evened out than the no-sugar version, with a slightly stronger cherry flavor and a bit lighter on the tartness and earthiness, but it still wasn't a pleasant mix.

Honestly, if you want a black cherry gelatin dessert, you're better off making your own. Simply use black cherry fruit juice, which you can often find in a glass container in your local grocery store's juice aisle. Bring a cup of the juice to a boil, add unflavored gelatin, let it bloom, add another cup of cold juice, and set it in the fridge. Take it out, cut it into cubes, and enjoy a truly tasty black cherry gelatin dessert.

Thankfully, not all the Jell-O flavors our reviewer tasted were bad. There are still some classics that are perfect summer sweets. So, until they take another stab at a black cherry flavor, we recommend you stick with the lime Jell-O.