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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.
