Homemade Sour Gummy Alphabet

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Making this Homemade Sour Gummy Alphabet  is fun and actually quite easy using a 3 ingredient recipe.  Wouldn’t it be cool to make gummies that spell out your kid’s name for his or her birthday party? Or how about using these candies as a treat when teaching your child their ABC’s.  There are so many possibilities.

Many years ago, before the Food Network started showing us the inner workings of candy factories, I went on a tour to see how gummy candies were made. I was so surprised to discover the candy was poured into corn starch imprinted with shapes like bears and worms. There were no silicone molds, just corn starch. So, I’m going to show you how to use that technique to make the gummy alphabet. Once you know how this works, you can make any shape you desire.

Start by filling a baking pan with an inch or two of corn starch and smoothing it out using an offset spatula. For this alphabet, 1 inch worked fine, but if you want to create larger gummy candies, you’ll want more corn starch.

To create the imprint in the corn starch, I used a set of small alphabet cookie cutters. Being they were not solid, I had to fill them so I’d get a solid letter, so I rolled out some fondant and cut it out, then left it in each cutter, then I pressed the letters backwards into the corn starch, creating about  1/4 inch thick letters. I pressed them in backwards, thinking it would make better looking gummies, but I don’t think it really mattered.

If you don’t have alphabet cutters, you can use plastic letters instead, just be sure they have been washed well or are new. You can also create your letters or shapes using fondant or even non-toxic Playdough. Just create your shapes, then press them into the corn starch. Make your own gummy worms, or press lego’s into the corn starch and make your own gummy toys.

One recipe of gummy candy will make three sets of 1 inch alphabet letters.

Homemade Sour Gummy Recipe

Ingredients:

1/2 cup water

1 – 3 ounce package of Jello (I used lemon)

4 packets of unflavored gelatin

Coating:

1/4 cup sugar (plain or colored)

1/4 tsp. citric acid

Stir together water, Jello-O and gelatin in a small sauce pan. Let sit for 5 minutes, then heat over medium heat, stirring slowly, until gelatin is dissolved. Remove from heat and let sit for 2 minutes. If there is foam on the top, spoon if off and discard the foam. Carefully pour the hot liquid into into a squeeze bottle with a very small opening in the tip and let it cool for a few minutes, until the bottle is easy to handle and the gelatin starts to thicken slightly.

Pipe the gelatin into the corn starch indentations. Hold the bottle at an angle, so the liquid pours out slowly. I use Squeeze-It bottles, that have very small openings in the tip. They work great for this because the liquid came out slowly enough that I could control where it went, plus they are small which is great for little hand.

Once you fill up all you indentations, allow them to sit at room temperature for an hour.

Pick all the letters out of the corn starch. Tap them to remove the excess corn starch. Put them in a strainer. Run water over the candies to remove the corn starch. Set the candy in a single layer on a few layers of paper towels, and pat dry well. Allow to air dry for 15 minutes before coating in sugar.

Stir 1/4 teaspoon powdered citric acid with 1/4 cup sugar. You can use plain granulated sugar or colored sugar.

Dip the gummy letters into the sour sugar to coat and they are ready to eat.

If you would prefer to make gummy candies using silicone molds, check out my recipe for Sour Gummy Bunnies over at Hungy Happenings.

 

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