Giant Gummy Bears!

This is a really recipe I found here, and it looks like a really fun one to make. These also look like they would be a funny gift to give somone.

You'll also need honey bear containers. A Google search for "honey bear containers" will get you hooked up with a honey supply supplier. You'll probably have to buy more bears than you need, but that just means more huge gummis!

Here I've taken them out of the bag and put the lids on.

The whole process is pretty simple, if a bit time consuming. Here's the entire contents of a 5 pound bag of Gummi Bears.

The next step is to start sorting. Once again, not too high on the difficulty scale, but it's a time-waster.


I finished sorting the gummy's, ending up with a wonderfully color-coordinated counter full of candy, and hands that appeared to be covered in a buttered cooking spray. One hand-washing later, we're ready to move on.

As you can see, I mobilized every spatula I own, unwilling to cross-contaminate the pristine perfection of each gummy color. I let everything melt slowly on a very low heat setting. Not only did that give me time to prepare the honey bears, but it also gave me a sick sort of pleasure as I watched individual gummys slowly die in the gummy magma. A tip, if you're going to try this at homestick with stainless steel. The black saucepan on the right rear burner didn't seem to want to melt the gummys as well, and it took more than twice as long as the others.

Soon enough (about 10 minutes on low) the gummis were all melted, and the magma turned clear. It's all shiny and uniform in color.  A word of warning: as anyone who's worked with molten sugar knows, getting this stuff on bare skin is horrifically uncomfortable to say the least. It's really, really hot, and it clings to your skin, so tread carefully when pouring.

 It looks like liquid emeralds,

The magma will try to get away from you as you pour, especially when the sides of the stream cool. They'll create thick channels that will guide the still-runny magma from the pan, but will eventually detach and fall onto your honey bear in a sticky mess. Keep your spatula moving, and if you've got some sort of funnel, that might work as well.

From this point, just repeat the process with the remaining colors, put the caps on, and toss 'em all in the refrigerator overnight. The following day they looked like this.

I used an X-ACTO knife to slice through the honey bear containers, and it cut through them like butter. Apparently the gummi mixture was tough enough to resist being cut along with the plastic. So, even when I poked through, the gummi sort of flexed out of the way and then sprung back into shape when the knife passed. So, here's the final product.

The most difficult part of the whole exercise was getting the small gummys to stand up in front of the big ones long enough to take a picture. You'll find that the gummy substance tastes infinitely better (sweeter?) after it's been melted down and then allowed to solidify again. But, like I said, it also gets significantly tougher, so it's quite a workout for the teeth and jaw. I bit the head off of the first one I made (just because, that's why) and it took about 10 minutes to break it down enough to swallow.