Gummies

Last week, Son One began requesting that we "make gummy worms." I think they had then at school, as part of the finale to the two weeks where they did all the colors? He even had a way of making them in mind—just mix chocolate icing with food coloring!

I suggested to Hayley that we just do Jell-O jigglers or something, but he was so insistent we needed to make gummy worms that I wondered if it was really that hard. A minute of googling got me to this article, which has a pretty simple recipe for gummies: basically just Jell-O powder with extra gelatin.

So when we went to the grocery store on Saturday, we picked up the ingredients and set to it that evening. We don't have any gummy worm molds, but I had remembered that his grandma had given him a Pampered Chef beach-themed cookie mold; I think we used it with Play-doh once.

It was pretty easy to make, and easy for him to participate in: mix the Jell-O and gelatin, whisk into water, heat up, put in mold, cool in fridge. The recipe suggested using a syringe to put the liquid in the mold, which was a good idea, and I was surprised by how quickly he figured out the syringe. He basically did all of them himself.

The result, I would say, is not really like a gummy you get at the store: it's basically just denser Jell-O, and it tastes like it. But every day when he wakes up, he asks if he can eat some gummies; every day when he gets home from daycare, he asks if he can eat some gummies. He clearly likes them. And he tells you which ones you get to eat—he likes that you like them too!