sour fruit juice gummies;

I love sour candy. Sour patch kids is one of my faves. So I wondered how hard it was to make my own sour fruit juice gummies. I definitely wouldn’t categorize it as easy. It takes some patience and special equipment. But I did make some delicious flavors of homemade gummies that taste fresh and bright. And the best part? I get to control the sour. So pucker up!

I had tried making gummies once before, using only gelatin. I was pretty disappointed. They tasted fine but the texture was much more like jello than gummies. And I’m not overly fond of jello to begin with. I’m pretty sure I threw most of them out. But these guys use corn syrup and pectin and are muuuuch better. And these sour fruit juice gummies use real fruit juice and of course I had to add the sour!

I actually derived this recipe from Claire Saffitz gourmet makes. A pastry chef that takes favorite commercial products and tries to make them from scratch, adding a bit of “gourmet” along the way. It’s a pretty entertaining show, with things like Krispy Kreme donuts, pocky, and sour patch kids. So she researches and does multiple trials in the Bon Appetit test kitchen and gets as close as she can to a gourmet version of the topic in a few days.

At the end she gives a summary of the recipe, but they’re very quick and not really done in a usable recipe format—it’s really just a bookend to the show. But don’t worry, I wrote it down and tested it out for you! So here’s the recipe for sour fruit juice gummies. [Jump to Recipe]

Here I made a tart cherry sour fruit juice gummy, as well as a lemon-lime sour fruit juice gummy. They both came out divine. I intended to make an orange one too, which I actually attempted. But I was using some odd gourmet ingredients (blood orange concentrate and orange bitters) and they didn’t quite work for whatever reason, but oh well. The cherry and lemon-lime ones turned out delicious

For the cherry, I used tart cherry juice. The only downside to these was that I couldn’t find a small portion of tart cherry juice to buy. So I had to buy 32 oz when I only needed half a cup. But at least juice will keep for a while in the back of the fridge. And besides you might be making multiple batches of these sour fruit juice gummies!

When it comes to the lemon gummies—my intention of making a lemon flavored sour gummy changed. I poured out the lemon juice I had only to find I was 1/4 cup short. Lucky for me I had some key lime juice in the fridge. So the lemon transformed into lemon-lime! Still delicious, yum.

secrets to success;

• Make sure to prepare your ingredients and molds and are organized. There are some time-sensitive steps, and when working with intensely hot sugar, you don’t want to burn yourself or make things irreparably sticky. The mixture sets up pretty quickly at the end, and you want to move fast.
• Whisk your gelatin! Not optional. The first time I made these and didn’t whisk the gelatin, I had hard clumps that stuck together and occasionally I had a gummy that had a hard, break-your-teeth clump of gelatin in it. If you whisk it while you add it to your fruit juice, you’ll avoid clumps and it will melt more easily and smoothly into your sugar mixture.
• Individual gummies are pretty small, and this recipe makes a big batch. Grab some gummy bear molds, or pick other molds like these cute dinosaurs! I recommend having at least 5-8 of these molds available, but it will depend on the volume of the molds you’re using.You need critical mass
• Get friends and family to help get the gummy mixture into the molds! This stuff sets fast and is sticky. Gummy molds usually come with droppers to use. They’re helpful, but the going is slow to fill each individual cavity. If the mixture becomes too thick and stringy, you can reheat the mixture once or twice over a very gentle heat to warm it up and make it more viscous. But try to do this minimally to avoid changing the texture of the gummy. That’s why reinforcements are helpful to work quickly!

Like making your own candies? Check out these delicious options.

• Make your own vanilla bean marshmallows and use them in these homemade marshmallow s’mores!
• hokey pokey honeycomb candy is a delicious, light, airy, and sweet candy, perfect on ice cream, coated in chocolate, or just straight up.
• Or checkout the ultimate truffle guide for all sorts of chocolate covered truffles as well as tips and tricks to make beautiful ones!