Homemade Fruit Snacks

"A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul..."-Proverbs 13:19

Ever since the whole licorice endeavor I have been on a candy making kick.  I don't even like candy so much.  Don't get me wrong, I have a taste for sugar- just in other forms, like chocolate or other desserts.  I have a son and daughter who love fruit snacks though and when I saw how seemingly easy they were to make I decided to give it a try.  Most importantly this recipe tastes every bit as good as what you would buy in the store.  Now if I could only figure out how to make them with juice I would be a little happier!

Here is what you need:

2 packages of unflavored gelatin
1 3 oz package of flavored gelatin
1/3 cup of water
molds-helpful, but not necessary

Here are a couple of different mold I used.  In pictures further down I will show you another technique I used not using any molds.  Another mold you could use is any empty styrofoam egg carton.  I had many trial and errors concerning the molds.  I found the smaller you make them the better.  The red mold you see pictured worked best by only filling it until the bottom was covered.  Making them too big was too sweet for my liking.  I got the clear mold from a cake decorating store and the red one from Walmart.  It's hard to tell from the picture but the clear mold are the shape of jewels.  The good news is whatever you choose to use the candy peels out with ease.

In a small saucepan combine the 1/3 cup of water, 2 packages of unflavored gelatin, and 1 3oz package of flavored gelatin.  Stir slightly and let sit for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, put the pan on medium heat and stir until all the gelatin is dissolved.  This only takes a couple of minutes

Start pouring the liquid into the molds.  You have to work quickly because it turns into gel rather quickly.  I made quite a few batches which is why my liquid is a different color in this picture.

Here is what I started doing just to see what would happen if I made little blobs on a parchment paper.  They lack a fun shape, but it still worked.

This was my experiment using the top of my egg carton.

After you have your molds filled, put them in the freezer for no more than 5 minutes.  After you take them out of the freezer just peel them out of the molds.  If it seems a little sticky put some corn starch on your fingers.

Now they're ready to eat!