What I love about homemade gummies is the possibilities are absolutely endless. If there are flavors you absolutely love, add them in, there is no flavor that is illegal. Well, that I know of… I typically like to sneak in some vitamins and immune supportive stuff like in my FLU SEASON GUMMIES which makes me feel good about what’s going into my kiddos.  In addition it makes me feel like I won some sneaky argument which was never fought…my kids are hard heads. I can’t imagine where they get that from.

So I took the littlest little on an errand spree yesterday, in search of a cute heart shaped mold. Luckily in between crying spells she was pretty willing on the prospect that we’d be making a treat with them. I hit up World Market where we barely escaped without breaking something and then luckily found an adorable heart shaped cookie mold at Sur La Table. That place must sneak into my subconscious in order to stock their shelves. #torture

Naturally these gummies needed to be pink. And literally, these gummies needed to be pink…NATURALLY. I have some veggie colored food dyes that I adore but I wanted to see how vibrant I could get them! So since I had just picked up some beets from the local farmer’s market, I decided to do those. The result was perfect and it needed so very little to get the desired color so there was no earthy taste to them. Happy Valentine’s Day y’all!!!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup organic white grape juice (no sugar added)
• Freshly squeezed lemon juice (I used the juice from 1/2 large lemon)
• 1-2 teaspoons beet juice (You can juice this yourself or actually buy store bought like THIS)
• Olive oil for greasing if using a metal mold
• 1.5 tablespoons grass fed gelatin (You need the orange/red can like THIS one)
• NOTE: I used a mold similar to this one HERE but silicone molds work great!
• NOTE: If you do not have access to or ability to make beet juice, you can heat and strain raspberries or use freeze dried strawberries for color. You can also mix cranberry juice with the white grape juice to dilute for brighter color. Lots of options here.

1. Over medium/high heat, combine white grape juice, lemon juice, and beet juice
2. In a small cup ladle out a couple tablespoons of the juice mixture and stir well to combine THOROUGHLY with the gelatin powder
3. Reintroduce mixture to the saucepan and whisk well, allowing to cook for about 3 minutes or so
4. Grease the mold (not necessary if using silicone molds) and then pour in the hot juice mixture
5. This recipe can make up to 40 gummies or more depending on the size of your molds
6. Once filled, refrigerate the molds until set then gently remove the gummies from the molds. Since I was using the metal mold, I chose to freeze mine for about 20 minutes and then gently used a paring knife to loosen them out of the molds. This is not necessary in silicone molds.