Be the hero daycare deserves. Be the hero any place kids want to eat candies!

Anyone who knew me pre-healthy eating knows, I LOVED gummi bears.

This simple three ingredient recipe can be made with endless flavour combinations.  Juice of your choice, a liquid sweetener, and gelatin powder.  Juice can be bought, or made in a juicer or even blended in your kick-ass blender and put through a nut milk bag.  Don’t use junk juice with stuff you can’t pronounce and loads of sugar.

You want gelatin powder for this one. Because you won’t be heating it hot enough to dissolve you can’t use sheet gelatin.  I searched high and low for a gelatin product that works at lower temperatures and found Great Lakes gelatin.   You can buy it in crazy quantity from the manufacturer directly – but you don’t need a case of the stuff.  I found it on Amazon.  Don’t be confused with a similar sounding product also made by Great Lakes.  You want the Kosher Beef Gelatin NOT the Collagen Hydrolysate.  The Collagen one has health benefits – but WILL NOT gel your candies.

You don’t need a fancy mould, but it definitely makes them more fun.  You can use ice cube trays or any other container such as a plastic container or a cake pan and cut the gummi into squares with a knife when it’s set.  If you go with a mould you can use them to make cute ice cubes for hot soups or just for fun so your mould isn’t a single use piece of equipment.  Stay tuned for homemade healthy chocolates – made in these moulds too.

Ingredients:

• Juice – 1/2 cup
  I used Cranberry, not from concentrate. (We have it to ward off my little one’s potential bladder infections.)  Any natural juice will do.
• Liquid Sweetener – slightly more than one Tbsp
  Honey or maple syrup.  I like the candies to be a little tart, and avoid adding loads of even natural sugars to their diets.  I used raw honey.
• Gelatin – 3 Tbsp
  Natural product that will work at room temperature such as Great Lakes Beef Gelatin

Directions:

1. Place all three ingredients in a small sauce pan.
2. Heat on low until gelatin starts to dissolve. When you start mixing its going to look like a thick paste. Its ok, once the gelatin dissolves it will look thinner.  This should only take a few minutes. You don’t want to boil this. It should be lukewarm.
3. Taste the liquid and see if this is sweet enough for your taste. I typically try and use less sweetener because we don’t need all the sugar.
4. Once gelatin is dissolved, pour the liquid into the molds or your pan and move to the freezer for a few minutes, just to set it. You will know when they are set buy touching them. They will feel like jelly. Pop out of molds and keep in the fridge until devoured.

Other combos:

• Blueberry juice with maple syrup
• Lemon with honey (add some cayenne if these are mommy candies)
• Grape with honey
• Apple cinnamon with maple syrup, just add a ½ tsp of cinnamon
• Strawberry with honey
• Orange, lemon and honey
• it goes on and on!

There are other liquid sweeteners, but we don’t use them in my house.

• Agave
  Super processed and has excessive amounts of sugar in it
• Coconut Nectar
  We don’t use because we have enough coconut in our diets with the oils and the milk we make
• Stevia
  Comes in a liquid but I don’t like the idea of tricking my body into thinking sugar is coming, and then not delivering any.  I’ve also read articles saying that it is anti-microbial (kills health gut bacteria) so we avoid this one to.

Learn more about Great Lakes Gelatin products