Chocolates & Confections Week 8

For this week in Chocolates & Confections class, we made confections based on gelatin and pectin....basically gummies (i.e. gummy bears and such)

I personally prefer the pectin jellies than the gelatin gummies. With the pectin jellies, real fruit purees can be used, whereas with the gelatin-based gummies, only store-bought flavorings or liquors can be used.

We used the frozen fruit purees that was available in our freezer. There were pear, rhubarb, blackberry, apricot, passionfruit, and ....lychee. I grabbed the lychee ASAP. I LOVE lychee, and have always wanted to make a confection with them.

With the pectin jellies, sugar, glucose (corn syrup can be used), pectin, and the fruit puree is cooked to a certain temp.

Once cooked, the fruit-syrup mixture is poured into a greased and sugared pan, and allowed to cool. Then can be cut into bite-size pieces and coated with more sugar.

They were sooo good! They're gluten free and vegan too!

The gelatin gummies follow similar procedure, except it has no fruit purees, just sugar, syrup, and gelatin. Food coloring and flavoring can also be added. We added kirsch and red coloring to ours--and it ended up tasting like children's cough medicine, but still pretty good.

Gelatin differ from pectin in that, being a protein, tend to be "stronger" and "tougher".

My teammate playing around with our kirsch gummy. It definitely lives up to its name.
The cooked gelatin is poured into a cornstarch mold. The mold is prepared by packing down cornstarch into a pan. An object or a mold (in this case, a fish-shaped plastic mold) can be pressed in to make impressions.

Things got a little messy here...

We then allowed it to set overnight. Once set, we very lightly coat them with vegetable oil to give it a nice sheen. That's how gummy bears get theirs.

Behold...our artisan gummy fish!
Of course, other shapes can be made too. Here's an example from another group...

They now have a gummy shaped like a hand. Kinda creepy, but cool.

This is yet another way to used up those last season's frozen fruits hiding in the freezer. Just puree them and turn them into pectin jellies. Or smoothies. Or sorbets. Or mousse. The possibility is endless.