Remember my review for Glee Gum? If not, that's okay -- but I'm back with another product from Verve, Inc., the makers of Glee Gum, that's perfect for the holidays. They have a series of
Make Your Own Candy Kits that are great gifts for curious, candy-loving kids (yes, all of that alliteration was on purpose).
They have three kits available: Make Your Own Gummies, Chocolate, and Chewing Gum. I chose to try the Gummies kit because I thought that one sounded the most interesting. The gummies are made from carageenan and agar, which are gels found in seaweed. Most gummies are made from gelatin, which is made by boiling down animal bones. I like the sound of seaweed gels better.
The ingredients included are sour mix, colored/flavored sugar, powdered seaweed, seaweed, and molding starch. There is enough to make quite a large batch of gummies, but I only used it to make a few this time around. The whole process took about 30 minutes for me on my own, but if you were making these with children I'd imagine it would take a little bit longer.
The first step was to take out the little seaweed and let it soak in a bowl of water. While it was soaking, I readied my candy molds. The kit doesn't come with any plastic molds, but you could easily use your own if you had some around the house. I didn't, so I used the molding starch that comes with the kits. In theory it's a great idea because then you can create whatever kind of molds you want, but I found that it practice it was a bit more difficult. First, it was hard for me to smooth out the starch (I'm a perfectionist and wanted it to be completely smooth, but soon realized that wasn't going to happen). I tried using a little toy dinosaur as a mold, but it didn't work so well, so I gave up and used the cap of my lip balm to create little circles.
This was definitely the messiest step, and even though I don't have young children I can imagine they'd need a lot of adult supervision, just to ensure that the molding starch didn't get all over the place!
Next it was time to create the gummy mixture. The base was the powdered seaweed, which is pictured above on the left. All that needed to be added was a 1/2 cup of water. I then stirred it for about a minute until it looked like the photo to the right (the instructions said not to worry about lumps). The most noticeable thing about this mixture is that it smells...not-so-yummy, we'll say. This might be off-putting to some kids when making it, but just ensure them that the gummies don't taste anything like how they smell at this point! Once the mixture was stirred, I added the seaweed that had been soaking in the water and microwaved the mixture for two minutes (this can also be heated on the stovetop).
After microwaving, the instructions said to take out the seaweed with a fork. The gel substance around it is carageenan -- it kind of looked like ramen noodles to me! The smell was stronger after heating, as can be imagined, but it mostly went away after adding in the flavored sugar mixture.
After adding the sugar packet, the mixture should be heated again for one minute or heated on the stove until it starts to bubble. I loved the bright pink/red/fuschia color!
Then it was time to pour the mixture into the molds. My dinosaur didn't come out so well, but the little circles were easy to pour in. I'd definitely recommend using very simple shapes for these. Once the shapes were set, I put them in the refrigerator for ten minutes to cool. You can keep repeating this process until you use up the mixture or have all of the gummies you want, the mixture just needs to be reheated each time. That's another benefit of using the carageenan gel instead of gelatin, it's "thermally reversible," so you can heat it up as many times as you need to.
And here are my finished gummies! The sour sugar coating was added (on the right) by shaking up the gummies and the sugar in a sandwich bag. I was obviously most excited to see how they tasted after all of this. They were much softer than I thought they would be, and they had a nice light flavor. They weren't as as sugary as most store-bought gummies, so that might be something that kids would have to get used to. But overall, I think this kit was a lot of fun and would be a great gift for kids. Not only does it give them the chance to make their own candy, but it can be used as a learning opportunity to teach them about how raw materials like seaweed are used around the world.
Bottom Line: If you're looking for a fun and educational gift this holiday season, I recommend the Make Your Own Candy Kits from Glee Gum! I had a lot of fun making mine and I'm turning 24 soon, so they're great for those who are a little older, too. What I love most about these kits is that they teach kids about how ingredients from nature can be combined to create such fun candies.
- Visit the Candy Kit Combo page and take advantage of their holiday sale: you can purchase a 3-pack of each type of candy kit for 30% off!
- Connect with Glee Gum on Facebook and Twitter
- Check out the store locator to see where Glee Gum products can be found near you (please note that Make Your Own Candy Kits are primarily sold online).
- Sign up for the Glee Gum Newsletter and receive a coupon!
Want to win a Make Your Own Candy Kit for yourself? The kind folks at Glee Gum are offering one kit of the winner's choice for one of my readers! Enter using the Rafflecopter form after the cut.
