Do you like gummy bears? Those squishy little things are so delicious and you can totally play with them before you eat them. Who doesn’t love playing with their food a little bit?
Something that you can’t do with gummy bears, though, is build stuff with them.
Can gummy bears build a house? Nope.
So, if you can’t use gummy bears to build a gummy house, what can you use to build a gummy house?
The answer is simple: gummy building blocks! And you can even make the gummy building blocks yourself.
The idea and recipe comes from Grant Thompson, “The “King of Random.”
Be warned, though, this recipe is a little bit complicated, so you’ll want to have a lot of time to do it right.
What you’ll need:
- One box of Jell-O powder mix for every color/flavor you want
- ¼ Cup of corn syrup
- Two packets of Knox Original Gelatin Unflavored for every color/flavor you want
- ½ Cup of very cold water
- Building block ice cube trays
Step 1
Mix ½ cup of cold water and ¼ cup of corn syrup together until you cannot see any corn syrup
Step 2
Pour the water/corn syrup mixture into a pot and add two packets of unflavored gelatin and the Jell-O powder. Do not turn on the heat yet!
Step 3
Gently mix the gelatin/Jell-O powder into the water/corn syrup mixture until the gelatin has separated. Do not turn on the heat yet!
Step 4
Okay, now turn it on. Heat the pot on medium-low heat for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir the candy syrup every minute or two to keep it from burning.
Step 5
When the gelatin has completely dissolved and the syrup is completely clear, you can pour it into the ice cube trays.
If you see that your syrup is not clear and smooth, but instead it has lumps, that probably means you either didn’t start with cold enough water or you heated up the mixture too quickly.
If this happens, simply pour the syrup into a tall drinking glass and leave it sit for about 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes or so, you will notice all the lumps have risen to the surface of the glass and formed a gummy paste on top.
You can easily scrape this paste off with a spoon or spatula and the syrup should be good to pour now.
To make filling the ice cube trays easier, you can pour the syrup into a condiment container (think a ketchup container you see in a restaurant) and squeeze the syrup into the ice cube tray.
Step 6
Let the syrup cool and harden in the ice cube tray for five hours.
To get the indents in the bottom of the building blocks, place another ice cube tray on top of the one you just filled, similar to the building block crayons. You may want to lightly brush the top ice cube tray with vegetable oil so it doesn’t stick when you take it off.
To make a really big batch, you can make multiple colors of syrup and let them cool and harden overnight in tall drinking glasses. Then, take the hardened syrup out, cut off the white layer of gummy paste on the top and rewarm the syrup into liquid before putting it in the ice cube trays.
To add some healthiness to your building block gummies, you can take some chewable vitamin C tablets, turn them to powder in a blender and add that powder to your syrup mixture to make your gummies vitamin C enriched (and give them a slightly sour taste).
Your gummy building blocks will keep for up to a month in a tightly-sealed container.
You know what else you can use to build things? Click-A-Bricks!
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