Valentine's Gummies

So finally I finished editting ALL of my Valentine's photos of my gifts for Duck.  So the next installment of his lunch gift is Valentine's Duck Gummies, inspired by Undressed Skeleton's organic gummies. I am going to post a disclaimer now: I could have screwed these up, because I had a hard time strictly following the recipe because she had three flavors posted, and the ingredients list and instructions kinda ran together.

I packaged them all nice, despite being in a Ziploc baggy. 

The recipe (so far as I can tell) is:
- 1/4 cup organic lemon juice (I may have used not-so-organic lemon juice)
- 1/4 cup organic lime juice (same not-so-organic here)
- 5 packets of unflavored gelatin
- 1 orange
- 2 cups of chopped strawberries
- I tbsp of honey

To start, I combined half of the lemon and lime juice, as well as the juice from half of the orange.  I am kinda terrified of the only true blender that resides in my home, so I started out making it up in half batches because I was afraid the whole batch wouldn't fit in my Magic Bullet.

The hat and headband make it slightly less terrifying right?

So, the only strawberries I had on hand were frozen, so I didn't bother chopping them up.  I just tossed them in the saucepan with the lemon/lime/orange juices and let the heat cook them down, since I was going to boil them anyway.

The pan looked so empty, but I was okay with that, I suppose. As it was slowly thawing, I remembered I had a potato masher (at least that's what I use it for, no one has really told me if that's its exact purpose).

So once the strawberries weren't so rock hard, I smooshed (yes that is a technical term) them into a pulp to make the boil easier.

Watching it boil, I realized that it was definitely cooking down a lot, so I started the second batch on a hunch that both batches could fit in the larger Magic Bullet cup. I must preface this with the fact that I have very little counter space, so one of my main prep areas in the unused portions of my stove top.

The chaos that is my stove top.

Can you tell that my strawberries have been in my freezer for awhile? Also, I must show you my measuring cups.  I absolutely love them! They are Russian Nesting Dolls ... so cute!

 I love the Nesting Dolls.  Every since my aunt gave me a huge one that she got while she and my uncle lived in Germany, I have fallen in love.  Now I have four sets (mostly small ones) that people have given me as souvenirs from their travels, as well as my measuring cups.  You might say I have five sets, if you include the matching measuring spoons. :)

Once both saucepans had boiled the strawberries to a soft, mushy goo, I let them cool for a couple minutes before pouring them in my Magic Bullet cup.  I was kinda worried about the plastic getting too hot. Before blending, I added a tablespoon of honey.  In the original, she used a packet of Stevia, but towards the end, she notes that you can use honey instead (as it is a natural sweetener).  As I already had honey, and I am not a big fan of packet sweeteners, I went with the honey.

After blending until smooth and letting cool for five minutes, I added the five (five?!?!?) packets of gelatin.  I am not a big fan of Jello, so this step caused me pause, but I believe in trying to follow the recipe to the letter the first time, and then tweaking it later once you have a first result (okay, so I didn't go organic, like Undressed Skeleton, but I can't normally afford organic produce, and I seem to be doing okay). 

Once added, blend until thoroughly combined. Pour into a pan that give you your desired thickness of gummies.  My cookie sheets aren't pretty, plus I like an easy clean-up, so I lined mine with foil. Spread the mixture until it is evenly distributed.

 Insert into the fridge for an hour so that it firms up, and then choose your desired cutter.  The smaller, the better, so the gummies are bite sized.

I chose my "duck" cutter (yeah, yeah, it is probably a chick or chicken cutter, but I prefer to thick of it as a duck) from my fleet of pie crust cutters.  The pie crust cutters I have are my smallest cutters, and are bite sized, so I used them.  I am going to be on the look-out for smaller cutters, but for now I love my wee crust-cutters.

As I was cutting the ducks out, I realized that my cookie sheet had been too big, so the gummies were super thin.  Next time, I am going to find a smaller lipped pan, so that they are thicker.  I tried to interlock my shapes so I could get more gummies with less "waste".  The scraps I ended up rolling up in the foil to save for later, in case they were a hit.

Some of the gummies stuck to the foil and/or tore as I picked them up, but overall it was pretty easy to cut them out.  I may have gotten into autopilot mode and forgot to use the interlocking pattern for a bit, but it wasn't a big deal. :)

 I ended up with a small army of ducks. Even though I am not keen on Jello, I tried them.  They ended up being really tart.  I personally wasn't a big fan, but Duck tentatively enjoyed them.  If you like sour gummies, I think that these gummies are perfect for you.  They were NOT bad, but they just weren't my personal taste.  Next time, I would use less gelatin, because they were a bit rubbery.  Overall, not a total win, but not a total fail.