Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!
The other day I was browsing my Facebook news stream and a list of holiday candy recipes caught my eye. I love candy; I love eating it, and making it is usually pretty fun too. A recipe for home made gumdrops was on the list. ( http://chocolatechocolateandmore.com/2012/10/homemade-gumdrops/ ) I've seen this recipe for several years now, and thought about trying it a few times. This time, since we actually had everything I needed in the house already, I decided to go for it.
The recipe called for apple juice, which we didn't have, but we did have five apples that weren't going to last much longer. We don't have a juicer so I had to improvise with our vitamixer blender and a fine mesh strainer. I left the peels on the apples because they contain most of the vitamins and healthy parts of the apple, and I knew our vitamixer could handle it. The apples blended into a fine pulp after I added some water and lemon juice right in the beginning. I could probably have used only four apples and gotten enough juice, but it was a good use for them. The resulting mush was like watery apple sauce, which I poured into a strainer over a bowl. There was about a cup and a quarter of juice after we let it sit for a few minutes.
I took my 3/4 cups of apple juice I needed and let Alyssa, my sister, have the rest. She mixed the juice with the pulp again. She wanted the leftovers for apple sauce, which she's still eating now. Apparently it's very good, especially with a little cinnamon.
The apple juice went into a small pot on the stove, to which I also added sugar, four servings (of an eight serving container) of cherry jello mix, a packet of unflavored gelatin, and some lemon juice. The sugar didn't look like it would all dissolve, but to my surprise, it did. I put it on the stove at medium heat and skyped with my boyfriend, John, while watching New Girl on Netflix, stirring all the while. Getting it to boiling took longer than I anticipated, but partly I just wanted to be careful not to overheat it. Once boiling, I stirred it constantly as the recipe said for several minutes. One didn't seem like enough, so I did two to be safe.
It took almost two whole New Girl episodes before I called it done and poured it into a glass loaf pan. It chilled for most of a day, more because I didn't have time to take it out and cut it than because it actually needed that long. I realized I was out of wax paper and had to run to the store for some just before cutting it. I used an Ulu knife to cut the pieces up; it's very sharp, and doesn't require the back and forth motion of a regular knife. It worked magnificently.
The pieces I cut it into are about half an inch on the longest sides. However, I'm going to try and go smaller next time I make these. I kept wanting to eat more of them, and if the pieces are smaller then I can have more and trick myself (and everyone else) into believing we're actually getting more candy when we're not.
I let them sit for about 20 hours, and I think they could easily have used another day, but I was impatient to try them.
I dipped them in granulated sugar and put them into a mason jar I was recently given. (Originally it contained a home made potato soup mix, which was heavenly. I'm in the process of acquiring the recipe.)
When I was finished, the seventy-something pieces filled the jar a little over half full.
However, we are now down to half of that because everyone has been eating them. They're definately a success with my siblings and I. They're soft and sweet. I just want to eat them all.
In the future, I am going to try a few things differently. The candies were a little more 'jello-y' than I like. I'm going to try and fix this by cutting them into smaller pieces, and allowing them to dry for longer. I'll put the sugar coing on right after cutting them up, instead of after drying. Also, I'm going to try just starting with plain gelatin (after I get some more) and adding my own flavoring. I have orange, lemon, mint, and raspberry extract, as well as imitation cherry extract & rootbeer concentrate. I'm looking forward to mixing & matching flavors. Cherry/orange, raspberry/lemon, etc.
Also, I made a booboo when I first poured the mixture into my bread pan: I forgot to spray the pan. I just knew it would be torture to get out if I didn't spray it, so I poured the mixture back into the pot, washed the bread pan, dried and sprayed it, then transferred the mixture back into it. I won't be forgetting to spray the pan again. That was a pain.
This was a successful recipe, and I'm looking forward to trying it out again in a few minutes with orange jello and apple sauce instead of cherry and apple juice. Half (or more) of the fun of cooking is improvisation and experimentation.
Pearl
