How to Make REAL Homemade Gummy Bears!

I was given the opportunity to get a free silicone gummy bear mold (includes a dropper) to try out for an honest review and I thought I'd share with y'all a little how-to now that I have it :)

99% of the homemade gummy bear recipes that you'll find online are basically just jello jigglers....thick jello.  Not exactly gummy. 

If you're looking for an easy-peasy recipe, you can go with a standard flavored jello+unflavored gelatin+water approach.  I wanted to try and do a healthier recipe so I have made mine with juice, unflavored gelatin, and honey. 

The gummy mold makes 50 gummy bears which seems like a lot, but is not a lot of volume really.  I'd recommend getting more than one if you can.  The recipe I'm giving you makes about 80-90 gummy bears.

1/3 juice (not pineapple)
2 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp unflavored gelatin

Mix the juice and honey.  Sprinkle the gelatin over the mix and let it sit for a few minutes to absorb (this is called "blooming")  You don't want to mix gelatin in a hot liquid.  After it's had a chance to bloom, heat up the mix until it boils.  I let it boil for a couple of minutes. 

That's my 1st tip-most of these recipes just treat them like regular jigglers-heat up to dissolve and then pour in the mold.  But the fact is, you're making a candy just like taffy and that means you need to boil the mix to make it turn out.

After letting it boil a bit, I put the pot in a slightly larger pot of warm water to keep the mix warm so it doesn't cool down and solidify while filling the mold or between batches.

Make sure to put the mold on something solid that you can move into the fridge like a cutting board or pan, otherwise you'll have a mess on your hand!  Use the handy dropper and fill up the bear mold.  It only takes a few minutes in the fridge or freezer and they're ready to pop out.  I haven't had to use any spray or oils, they pop out easily!

My 2nd tip to making them more like store-bought gummies is to let them dry out a bit.  In factories, they put gummy bears in a drying room for a couple of days.  I've noticed that an extra day or 2 in the fridge gives them more bite-though I also noticed the flavor is also lessened that way for some reason.  I think next time I'll try and add strong oils to bump up the flavor. 

We love this mold, we've done a few batches without any problems.  It would also be great to make chocolate bears or even mini crayon bears (make sure the kiddos know those aren't edible!)

If you try this out, let me know how they turned out!!!  To check out the mold go HERE.

As stated, I received this mold set for free in exchange for my honest review, I was not compensated in any way.