Makes about 2 liquid cups’ worth of gummies
1 1/2 cups cold orange juice
7 T grass-fed gelatin powder
4 T honey
4+ tsp vitamin C powder
(for this particular recipe—it’s organic and made from whole fruits. More varieties of quality, whole-food vitamin C powder and other supplements can be found at health food stores.)
1/4 tsp organic orange extract
1/8 tsp vanilla
Pinch real sea salt
First, pour your juice into a small saucepan
. Sprinkle in the gelatin powder
on top. Now, you’re going to let the gelatin "bloom"—
this is key in getting good texture in your gummies and allowing the gelatin to fully dissolve. As the gelatin powder absorbs the liquid, it will cause the juice to swell up into
a weird, wrinkled, brain-looking thing in your pot (kids always get a kick out of this). Let it do this for a couple minutes, and if the juice hasn’t totally absorbed the gelatin and you see white powder floating on top, stir it in.
You can’t let any white powder on top stay there, or it will cause lumps of goo to remain (which are nearly impossible to dissolve) once you heat it up.
So, with all the powder absorbed and bloomed, heat the mixture at a low temperature and let it liquify. As the juice gets warm and steamy, stir in the honey and remaining ingredients. Once the mixture is totally liquid (not thick and pudding-like), it’s ready to be poured into your molds.
You can use cute little silicone candy molds like I did or you can simply pour the mixture into a small glass baking dish or baking pan, and then you can cut it into squares after it’s set.
Once you’ve poured the mixture into your molds or baking dish, just stick it in the fridge for about a half-hour, until it’s completely set. The gummies should easily pop out of the molds if you just push them outta there from the underside. Sometimes they really do pop out of there and wind up shooting across the kitchen floor! And
then your dog eats one. Oh well, it’s good for him.
Oh, and a note about the vitamin C powder
— I used 4 teaspoons of the vitamin C powder, and I couldn’t taste it in there at all. Next time, I’m going to add even more—probably at least 6 teaspoons—so that there will be more vitamin C per gummy. Each teaspoon of
the whole-food vitamin C powder I used
contains about 500 mg vitamin C, so if you do a little math, you can determine exactly how much vitamin C is in each gummy, if you’d like to know.