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If your kids love fruit snacks or fruit gummies–but you don’t love the HFCS in ’em or the price–make your own with fruit juice and gelatin. It’s easy!
It’s not easy having a crunchy mom. J-man’s school lunches include homemade granola bars, sandwiches on homemade bread, and fruit or veggies from the garden. All the other kids at baseball practice get Gatorade, and he gets homemade electrolyte drink.
One special treat that he really likes are gummy fruit snacks, which are one of the biggest rip-offs on the face of the planet. I refuse to pay upwards of $3 for a few pouches of high-fructose-corn-syrup goo in a shiny box.
As always, I started searching for a way to make them instead of buying them. There are lots of recipes out there, and most of them call for natural gelatin because of its health benefits. I was all set to order it until I read the reviews. Some of them said it tastes like cow hair–which I knew would never work. Nobody wants a cow-hair gummy in their lunch!
I decided to “wimp out” and make gummies with Knox gelatin and fruit juice. There’s no reason to DIY something if nobody will eat it! After a few tries, the recipe came together in the form of these little monsters.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Fruit Snacks for Wimps. No natural gelatin, true–but no HFCS or artificial dyes, either! Sometimes you gotta do what you can and not worry about the compromises.
Tools Used to Make Homemade Healthy Fruit Snacks
Cool Dinosaur Molds (or molds of your choice or a square baking pan): I love using the dinosaur molds to make fruit snacks that make my kids smile.
Daterra Cucina nonstick saucepan: for even heating and easy cleanup
Homemade Healthy Fruit Snacks Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup fruit juice
3 Tablespoons Knox gelatin
1 Tablespoon raw honey (optional)
Warm the fruit juice and honey, if using. Add the gelatin and stir until incorporated. Pour into cool dinosaur molds or a square baking pan, and refrigerate. After chilling for an hour, unmold or cut into cubes and serve.
Think of the possibilities! Grape gummies, blueberry-pomegranate gummies–heck, if you have a juicer, you could make kale gummies! If your kids like sour gummies, try these with orange juice or (yowza!) lemon juice. Don’t use pineapple juice though, as it prevents gelling.
I was just looking at Knox’s at Amazon to get more and found we are really all that wimpy, Knox’s is from animals, just been doing it longer. It’s the brand we’ve always used and never had any scent or weird tastes.
Thanks for being real! I have had Knox boxes in my cupboard left over from science experiements (I am a science teacher) and havebeen contemplating making my own gummies for my daughter but all the recipes are so stuck on everything being useless and life threatening unless you use the other stuff. Can’t food just be for fun sometimes?
Where did you find the tiny dinosaur molds?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0089JFRWA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0089JFRWA&linkCode=as2&tag=brothumam-20
It is well worth investing in the nutritional value of great lakes. No hfcs is a great change for sure. Mine don’t taste like cow hair. Thankfully!
I use great lakes gelatin which is grass fed and I have never had a problem when making jello or fruit gummies with them tasting like cow or fa or whatever. You should try it! Even if it’s just on yourself at first. I’m sure the nutritional value far surpasses that of the knox gelatin. Happy snacking!
* farm
I’m sure it does have more nutrition than Knox! Great Lakes is more expensive, but I need to give it a try.
How long will they last and where do u store them
Just made some gummies/jello from another websites recipe from homemade juice, but my son is skeptical, so maybe I’ll work on my recipe. I made carrot, kale, spinach, apple & orange jello. I think it good & so ealthu, he’s not feeling it. I also made strawberry, lemon, grape, spinach which was much tastier. But it’s murky green & he wants “blue” jello… Idk how we’ll manage that. Ha! These molds are super cute, where did you find them?
Haha! Blue jello will be tough. Maybe add blueberries?!? The molds are on Amazon: http://amzn.to/16Komio and they have a variety of different shapes.
I bought the small box of Knox gelatin at the store to try this out; how many of the little envelopes would I need to make 3 tablespoons?
How ‘warm’ is warm? Are we talking just before a boil? Or just like warm? I’m also wondering about storage. I’m gonna try these tonight, so we’ll see how it goes!
Also curious how you store them and how long they last! Also where did you get the cute molds?
Just wondering how long these are usually good for? Do you store them in the fridge?
Can you use juice left over from canned fruits, like fruit cocktail, peaches, ect? I like using them, but can never think of what to do with the remaining juices!
I really appreciate this post/perspective. Very refreshing with all the ernest crunchiness out there. I wish I had read the reviews of the natural gelatin before ordering because they are right. It tastes a little like hair (don’t know if it’s bovine specific). Not to mention, expensive.