Last week, the Los Angeles Times' Betty Hallock wrote about a hot trend today in mixology: edible cocktails.  These aren't your college-era Jello shots (not that any of us did those, of course), but rather a sort of molecular gastronomy for beverages.  Betty took a few minutes to chat with Cork & Knife Radio about what she discovered while munching on cocktails.

(Listen to the 11 minute interview here.)

"There is a line being blurred between food and drink," Betty says.  The article came to be after Betty's editor noticed edible cocktails being passed around at an area restaurant.  With the holiday party season approaching, they thought this would make an appealing story.  The original article is also accompanied by an online photo gallery of some of the more interesting cocktails they discuss.

Essentially, these "jelly shots" (as the drinks are described) use gelatin sheets to give body to traditional and non-traditional cocktails alike.  For instance, you could have a gin and tonic that you could pick up and eat rather than lift and sip. 

In this Cork & Knife Radio interview, Betty discusses the roots of this trend and which of the cocktails she tried that she liked best. "Jellied liquor and alcohol go back to the mid 1800's ... flavorful punches were jellied with gelatin and served up on hot summer evenings," she told host Chip Griffin, even though they seem to be popping up more frequently today. In the "it's a tough job but somebody has to do it" category, she revealed that the LA Times test kitchen created hundreds of these edible shots in preparation for the article.

In addition, Betty notes that since the article appeared last week, she has been contacted by readers interested in re-creating even some of the most difficult edible cocktails at home, so there's apparently a keen interest for this sort of "beverage."

(Listen to the 11 minute interview here.)