During my gummy classes and demos, I’ve been telling people that any jello recipe should work as gummy with extra gelatin added, including those based on milk ingredients for white, opaque jello. This week, in advance of my demo at the Houston Cake Club’s Cake Decorating ExPO (I really am scheduled to demonstrate even though I’m not listed on the page), I figured I’d give opaque jello a shot myself.
Previously, I’ve added White White food colouring to regular gummy mixes and it does make it opaque. You can even swirl it just a little bit to make a marbled effect:
Amoebas. No, wait, not amoebas; these are test of mixing White White into otherwise standard green gummy. The one on the left is swirled a little, the right is mixed fairly thoroughly. I added a drop of the original transparent gummy on each for contrast.
But in order to test making gummy from scratch recipe for white jello, I had to start with an actual recipe, since I’d never made that before. So I used the oft-cited Food Librarian recipe, but tweaked it to suit gummy. Here’s what I did: I mixed 4 envelopes of Knox gelatin with 1/2 cup of water in my small nonstick pot I always use for gummy. I let it bloom thoroughly. Then I added a small squirt of hot water from the baster (see my basic gummy tutorial for more on using basters) and warmed the whole thing over low heat until it was melted. I added the can of sweetened condensed milk and mixed thoroughly over low heat until it was warm and completely blended. I didn’t add any extra water beyond that.
The result was gummy that did eventually set up, especially in the fridge, but much, much more slowly than regular gummy. It also felt a bit floppy compared to the usual gummy, so I think a fifth envelope might be in order. Taste-wise it was actually quite pleasant, a mildly sweet, soft candy. I thought it’d be horribly over-sweetened but it wasn’t.
Unfortunately, the sweetened condensed milk had a significant yellow tinge, so the gummy isn’t really white. It’s more like ivory. So while this worked well enough, especially with other colour added, I’m going to have to do more research to get an actually white gummy.
Here are photos of my research, which happened to coincide with me wanting to play with my new Star Wars molds that I had on preorder since last spring and only arrived a couple of weeks ago. The R2s are the gummy as described above, the Han Solos are the same stuff with some Americolor Super Black added.
I'd make some lewd comments about black rubber Han Solos if this wasn't a family-friendly blog. Hey kids, look, R2D2! *innocent*
He totally shot first. Just sayin'.
So that was okay, but really, Carbonite needs to look metallic. BRING OUT THE EDIBLE PEARL SPRAY!
Awww yeah, that's what I'm talking about! Also, who knew that Carbonite smells like vanilla?
Now the gummy looks like a little chunk of metal, except that you can make him touch his toes:
"Calisthentics. Why did it have to be calisthentics?" Whoops, I'm crossing the streams again.
Here’s a side-by-side with an unsprayed one so you can see how dark the black gummy comes out:
Either way, he's chewie.
Then I hit an R2 unit with the pearl spray too, just for kicks. Note how it definitely makes the lines easier to see:
Shiny happy droids laughing...gold and silver (and pearl spray) shiii-ii-iine.
"Bleep."
Then I did some quick dabbing on another R2 unit with some edible-ink markers and that turned out okay too (albeit sloppy because I wasn’t going for precision):
"Now you can see the resemblance to my cousin Hal."
So the overall result is that this recipe works, but if you want it less floppy, add more gelatin. I still have some leftover stuff to play with tomorrow, which looks eerily like a lump of flesh in the pot. Hrm, maybe I should add a little bit of a pinkish hue and see what terrifying monstrosities I can create while still keeping a PG rating on this blog…
PS Maybe I need to find a way to get them to the Firefly people so they can hide gummies all over their sets.
Yep. That's nerdy. Also a little disturbing. 🙂
Very cool!
I wonder if coconut milk would make a whiter version?
Possibly…if you give it a go and it works, let me know and I'll post your results if you want. 🙂
BTW about to post in about half an hour on what I've been up to with the yellowish stuff today and it's very very very very wronnnnggggggggggg. 😀
I'm a bit behind, but if you're making chewie gummies, why did you not do one of Chewbacca?? 😉
Hahaha…if there was a mold for Chewbacca, I'd be all over making chewy Chewies. 😀
I have a question, and this seemed like a good place to put it (yay, topical comments). I’m not used to working with condensed milk, and I’m considering the possibility of making condensed-milk gummy for the CUUPS Halloween/Samhain party in my area. (The life-sized brain ice mold at Jo-Ann’s is calling me…)
But before I dare propose such a thing, I’d like to know if I need to refrigerate condensed-milk gummy. It wouldn’t be a deal-breaker if it does need to be kept chilled (imagine walking in with a cooler filled with ice cubes and BRAINS), but I’d rather not promise a gummy brain, get there with it, and have it all nasty and soured. I also don’t want to prep a cooler if I don’t have to.
That's a really good question. I've had opaque gummy stuff out as long as regular gummy and if anything, noticed less tendency to mold than the regular stuff, possibly because of the high sugar content in the sweetened condensed milk.
But to be safe, I just went and poked around the Eagle Brand page and on things like their candy and fudge, I'm not seeing any warnings to keep it refrigerated. Fudge in particular is a similar cooking method (warming it up but not boiling), so if they're not issuing dire warnings to keep fudge refrigerated, I'd say you should be safe enough for an event.
That's me being ultra-careful in a please-don't-sue-me kind of way. 🙂
More relaxed, I'd say keep your stuff in the fridge until it's time to go to your event and then don't worry about it unless you have to travel in significant enough heat whereby you might melt your gummy and lose all of that wonderful brain definition! Here in Texas I'd probably take it in a cooler just because of that reason. If you're in a cooler climate, you should be fine.
I’m in Florida, actually. Same climate, but with more beaches. 🙂 I was already planning to pour it into the mold that morning, freeze or refrigerate for most of the day, and bring it over, still in-mold, that afternoon. Since I plan on slicing it after I get there anyway (yay, yummy brain slices!) I figure that should work out OK, since it’s not going to go bad or anything.
My main concern was simply whether or not it would be safe to eat condensed-milk stuff that had been out of the refrigerator for a couple hours. Since you make all sorts of desserts, I figured it was best to get a second opinion before doing something with the potential to Go Horribly Wrong.
I will take pictures of the brain if it gets approved. 🙂 Since the ice mold comes with Crystal Lite packets to add color and flavor, it should look deliciously creepy!
Update on gummy brain. Jo-Ann was out of brain molds, but they still have skulls and spiders, so I got a skull.
I did a practice run with my boyfriend FOR SCIENCE! and found that you’ll need about 2 batches to fill up those jumbo-sized ice molds.
There will be pictures, possibly accompanied by candy-melt chocolate in skulls and crossbones.