Solid Wiggles: Recipes and Techniques for Phenomenal Jelly Shots and Cakes - Hardcover

Derman, Jena; Schramm, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593838149 ISBN 13: 9780593838143

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2026

Synopsis

Learn how to make over 45 mouthwatering boozy and alcohol-free jelly shots and cakes, from the cofounders of Solid Wiggles.

In Solid Wiggles, Jena Derman and Jack Schramm of Solid Wiggles teach you how to create more than 45 of your own delectable and eye-catching jelly shots and cakes for all occasions. Unlike the saccharine shots of our youth, Derman and Schramm’s elevated cocktail jellies are flavored with high-quality spirits and freshly squeezed juices, then handcrafted into works of edible art. And the best part? You can achieve it all in your own kitchen.

These showstopping, conversation-starting masterpieces will blow you and your guests away. Directions for every step of the process are clear and concise. They’ll have you sourcing the correct tools, blooming gelatin, scaling to the right size for your party, and even managing advanced decoration techniques like a true jelly professional.

The book is divided into two sections: Party ANIMAL, for beginners, offers a range of recipes that are simple enough to be assembled in under three hours (including chilling time); and Party PRO, for those who want more complex treats, includes layered recipes with whimsical—and achievable—design patterns that range from a dusting of glitter to stunning pop art–style flowers. No matter which route you choose, your Solid Wiggles jellies (and you!) will be the star of the show.

About this title

About the Author

Pastry chef Jena Derman and mixologist Jack Schramm are the cofounders of Solid Wiggles. Their boozy and nonalcoholic cocktail jellies and cakes have been featured in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, The Hollywood Reporter, and more. Their products ship nationwide and can be found on the menus of popular New York restaurants and bars such as Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi, Milady’s, Porchlight, Champers Social Club, Jungle Bird, and others.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Solid Wiggles Story

Our cocktail jelly business, Solid Wiggles, exists at the nexus of a quadruple Venn diagram that includes art school, pastry, bartending, and food studies. Before we made a living creating edible art, we each represented two of the four circles—Jena covered art school and pastry; Jack had a background in bartending and food studies. With our combined powers, a portal was ripped open in space and time and Solid Wiggles emerged, wiggling and jiggling into hearts, minds, and bellies.

While attending Hampshire College for printmaking, drawing, and stop-motion animation, Jena started baking as a college job at Hungry Ghost Bread in Northampton, Massachusetts. She was so enamored with the process that after college she moved to Philadelphia to run the bread bench at Metropolitan Bakery. After a pastry lead at Metropolitan quit unexpectedly, she was thrust into a new focus: pastry. Her mentor James Barrett knew her art background and borderline sadistic attention to detail (her dad was an architect—it’s definitely genetic) were exactly the skill sets she needed to thrive in the field. Jena got experience in chocolate, tarts, pies, dessert catering, and wedding cakes, before landing back in her native New York City, where she climbed the ranks at Momofuku Milk Bar. She worked closely with Christina Tosi as a pastry cook, R&D sous chef, and director of culinary operations.

When Jena met Jack, he was in his junior year at NYU. He had just left the Music Business program to follow his heart (stomach) toward a degree in Food Studies. His first job in NYC was as a barista at Milk Bar in the East Village. They admired his gumption, pluck, and indefatigable spirit enough to agree to give him an internship (paid!) at the commissary that fulfilled a college credit requirement. Thus began his one-semester stint as “Nutritional Project Manager,” reporting directly to Jena. Jack was cloyingly earnest—he brought his nutrition textbooks to work “just in case” for a job that was 97 percent data entry—but Jena found him mostly useful and generally easy to work with.

When Jack clocked out of his barista shifts, he would head across the street for drinks at the cult classic of the Momofuku Cinematic Universe, the cocktail bar Booker and Dax. The combination of insanely delicious cocktails, centrifuges, liquid nitrogen, pillars of flame, and incredible vibe tickled all the right parts of his brain. He went in for a trial shift as a barback, just to check things out and learn a bit. By the time the bar closed three years later, he had worked his way up to head bartender. After a stint at the NoMad, he helped Dave Arnold and Don Lee open Existing Conditions, an experimental cocktail bar in Greenwich Village.

While Jack was busy slinging fancy cocktails, Jena forged her own path, leaving Milk Bar to enter the food tech space and eventually opening her own research and development and commercialization consultancy. (If you need a dozen cookies or a hundred thousand cookies, Jena Derman is the one to call.)

Jena’s jelly journey began in 2018 when she was tasked with creating a one-off jelly centerpiece for a friend’s birthday party. She had an established wedding cake business, so large-format desserts were right in her wheelhouse, but this new medium with its artistic opportunities and grand spectacle were thrilling for its creative potential. She was spurred on by friends who were blown away by the early experiments. By 2020, she was making jellies for weddings, parties, and art openings. When her creations got a writeup in Food & Wine (shoutout Khushbu Shah), Jena knew it was time to get serious about the jellies as a business and expand her offerings.

All of the jellies in Jena’s solo years were beautiful, but her flavors were limited. All jellies that are injected with milk jelly art need to be two things: delicious and CLEAR, so that the art pops. There are only so many tasty liquids that can be set with gelatin and retain their clarity—even a few drops of lemon or ginger juice added to something clear like coconut water will render the finished product too cloudy. That September, she reached out to Jack to pick his brain about his expertise in clarification—the process of removing sediment, solids, and cloudiness from fresh juices to craft perfectly clear and boldly flavored cocktails. They met up at Jena’s apartment to catch up and make a bunch of clear juice and set it into jellies. Ever entrepreneurial, Jack made a fateful suggestion: “Hey, what if we put booze in these?”

Realizing our individual strengths would be unstoppable together, we teamed up and Solid Wiggles was born. Now, several years later, we have a happy home in Brooklyn and a phenomenal team working tirelessly to produce thousands upon thousands of shots and cakes for bars, restaurants, weddings, get-togethers, dinner parties, picnics, birthdays, galas—whatever event our customers can dream up, we’ve got a jelly for them. We’ve had so much fun on this journey, and now it’s finally time to share everything we’ve learned with you!

Edition details

• Publisher: Ten Speed Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593838149
• ISBN 13: 9780593838143
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176