i'd never heard of such a thing, but tripped over it yesterday via a Pioneer Woman blog post. (Look, one of the pictures features cattle vaccines stored in the kitchen fridge, which makes me homesick. )
Anyway, finger jello is a very pretty layered dessert, different flavors/colors of jello (including a condensed milk-based white layer) that you cut into shapes or small cubes and eat with your fingers (presumably the reason for the name). There's also stained glass or broken glass jello?!
i'd heard of jigglers, but never finger jello, and did some asking around. My good friend LZ hadn't heard of it, so it's not a upper northeast thing. i also received this gchat this morning:
Lauren: maybe finger jello is indigenous to the 40s?
me: on what are you basing this supposition?
Lauren: it just seems like it fits in with those savory jello sides with meat, and looks like tiny finger sandwiches
KateB, a Chicagoan-by-upbringing, associated the name with jello to be eaten with fingers.
Katherine: Finger jello? Oh, Jello Jigglers. Extra gelatin, right?
me: you are amazing Katherine: Jello shots!
Which means that either Kate's brilliant (which she is), had heard of it before, or invented it in a former life. She had never heard of the Jello easter egg molds, which i referenced as a jello-based dessert popular when i was a 'tween. (Our mold leaked. Ugh.) That lead to us both finding a blog post for a gorgeous layered easter egg do-it-yourself thing, and also includes a drill. i personally love recipes that involve actual tools.
The origin of the name is still illusive. The Jello wikipedia page is no help, but did kick up some interesting tidbits. Apparently, there were once savory jello flavors, including Italian salad, celery, and tomato flavors for use in jello molds? There's also the awesome line, "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jello's reputation as family-friendly was slightly tarnished by Jello shots and Jello wrestling."
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