Holiday Countdown Day 13

December 13 - Make gummies.

Aleks has wanted to learn more about candy making for awhile. I'm no candy-maker, and I'm not certain what his exact aim in all of it is, but I agreed to put making gummies on the countdown list, thinking we'd maybe give some away as gifts. I found a tutorial on Instructables (actually, there were several, but this seemed the simplest and most to bring about the desired consistency). It was certainly a rare event for me to be headed to the grocery to buy Jello, but I got a large box of cherry, which we used about half of in combination with non-flavored gelatin.

First, you mix the two with water in a Pyrex measuring cup. Let sit for ten minutes to allow the gelatin to absorb all the water. Then place the cup in a saucepan of water to double boil the mix and allow it to melt into a pourable consistency. This takes awhile. Aleks did the stirring and almost had a disaster when he fell off his chair. Luckily, it all worked out and no one was injured, though we were all startled.

We poured this into a bred pan (which I lined with plastic wrap, just to make it easier to get out, though I'm not sure that I needed to. Putting it in the freezer as the tutorial recommended did help quite a bit in speeding up the hardening process.

They look like Jello, but they are quite a bit harder, I swear. The boys ate them all before noon the next day. So alas, no one will receive any. They weren't that great and I'm sure there are better ways of doing it. Using Jello as the flavoring might have been just too much gelatin, though the other recipes I read which called for fruit juice didn't seem to have the consistency we desired. Clear juices I think help with clarity of the end result. The other thing is that this recipe didn't make that many. I'm not real anxious, however, to make a big batch any time soon.