All summer long I’ve tried to create a powerful (tasting/nutritional) gummy from beet and pomegranate juice powders. I’ve gotten close, but nothing to write home about. My one gummy that actually solidified filled me with pride. I took photos of it. But when I put them all into a container, over the next few days, they melted together and sat in the bottom of the container as if they’d never been created.
Then I found out that pomegranate juice and gelatin just don’t get along together. Pomegranate juice contains an enzyme that resists gelling. The secret is to boil the pomegranate juice.
The thing was, I wanted powerful flavor, and you cannot really boil a thick paste. This all left me two options.
- Make a weak gummy.
- Try something completely different.
I went to work on number 2. Mixing up a variety of different combinations of pomegranate to beet to water ratios, but most just turned into sticky stuff that left my kitchen looking like OJ Simpson had been visiting.
I tried dehydrating them, and got awfully close to something that solidified and didn’t break your teeth.
And then it hit me. How about just using the powder in candy molds and then spraying them with water?
And then, even better, spray them with BACO (a multivalent silver that kills E. Coli and other harmful pathogens).
Here are the molds prior to spraying.
And here they are after being sprayed with BACO.
My oven doesn’t have a dehydrate option, so I set it on the lowest temp: 170 F, for 2 hours and that was that.
The outcome was interesting. Some were hard but not “jawbreaker” hard, and after a bit they became quite chewy. But all in all, they were delicious and taking my blood pressure after chewing on them it was always perfect . . . though I should add, “for my age.”
So the recipe is this:
- ¼ Cup Beet Juice Powder
- ¼ Rounded Cup Pomegranate Juice Powder
- 2 Tablespoons Modified Tapioca Starch
We learned on the second batch that adding a resistant starch kept the candies chewy and not hard like a potential jawbreaker.
There you have it. Try it. You can get the beet juice powder (organic) at the nonprofit store Simply the Best. Some of you know I am the only volunteer working for Simply the Best and we had our freezer go out and lost $2,000 in inventory. The pomegranate juice powder was all thrown out (you should have seen the bees that moved into the garbage can at the end of my driveway after that). However, there is beet juice powder in stock as well as BACO and if you write [email protected] after you’ve ordered some beet juice, we’ll send you a large silicone candy mold (like in the picture). You’ll have to get your Organic Pomegranate Juice Powder from Amazon.