Gummy Hearts

Target is selling heart-shaped silicone ice cube trays in the front aisles as you walk in the store.  We’re big fans of homemade gummy bears (or gummy squares, since I’m lazy and just pour the mix into an 8×8 pan and cut it into squares) so I picked up a two-pack of the heart trays to surprise Rory.  He loves cooking and always wants to pull up a chair to help me with anything that involves cracking eggs, mixing bowls, or the shoving things into the food processor.  I fully anticipate him being able to make us breakfast by the time he’s 7.

Ingredients:

4 cups of juice

1/4 cup of raw local honey

1.5 ounces (by weight) of grass-fed gelatin (or 6 packets if you only have Knox)

We use an organic unsweetened 100% cranberry juice (32 oz bottle) diluted 2:1 with spring water and then sweetened with 1 teaspoon of KAL stevia as the regular “juice” in this house.

1. Heat 3 cups of juice to boiling and pull off of the heat as soon as it does.

2. Sprinkle all of the gelatin into the remaining 1 cup of juice in a big bowl.

3. Let stand for 30 seconds.

4. Add the hot juice to the cold juice and mix.

5.  Add the honey.

6.  Whisk well, or use a hand-held smoothie mixer to blend it good.

7.  Spoon into heart-shaped ice cube trays–  this amount of liquid probably fills 6-8 trays.  Just dump the extra into a dish and make lazy gummy squares.

8.  Refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Mine didn’t exactly pop out when they were ready.  The vultures were circling so I had to pull them out at the 30 minute mark and they were more like very solid Jello.  The second set stayed in the fridge for 6 hours and those were perfect.  Either way, I used the dull side of a butter knife to go around the edges before sliding it under the heart and lifting it out.  This is such an excellent way of getting more protein into picky kids, and they were thrilled to eat them.

About these ads