Backyard-Fruit Juice and Local Honey Gummies demo workshop
Date: October 12th, 2024
Time: 1 – 3:00pm
Event: Zero-Waste Halloween
Where: Community Hub Lillooet, BC
Backyard local fruit for juice donations welcome.
This demo workshop is also an opportunity for anyone to get involved in our #takebackhalloween zero-waste local gummy-making project Halloween week Oct 26 – 31st leading up to the evening of trick-or-treating. Fresh fruit gummies have no preservatives and no shelf-life they are best eaten within about 10 days after preparation. People can volunteer their house to host a flavor on the Gem-Flavor Trail town-wide treasure map and choose to give out their favorite flavor(s). Kids will be given the Gem-Flavor Trail map as well as a paper bag with a check list of F.G.s to collect. We will be producing the gummies all week leading up to Halloween depending on volume of fruit juice. We have some juice (cherry, plum, strawberry) from the fruits we have been picking all summer in conjunction with the Lillooet Food Matters gleaning program. Please help by donating any other flavors of fruits you have surplus. Volunteers are welcome to come help us make gummies in the afternoons in the days leading up to Halloween in a professional, hygienic kitchen. We have a lot of fun candy mold shapes, including bats to represent Lillooet’s diverse bat community. If any local businesses would like to partner or sponsor this initiative we will also promote our appreciation of your contribution with all our partners on social media. If anyone is a good treasure map-maker and would be willing to help create our treasure map we would love you forever. If we have a lots of gummies we will set up a candy stand at the Miyazaki Haunted House.
Making gummies from local fruit is astonishingly simple and fun for kids and adults of all ages. Please come for this quick demonstration of best practices for making fresh gummies and go home with a paper bag full of guilt-free candy. Only three ingredients used: Juice from backyard fruits, local honey, gelatin.
Resources to make Backyard Halloween Gummies:
Buy Halloween molds: Michaels
Recipe:
- 2 c juice brought to a boil and reduced depending on flavor.
- 5T grass-fed gelatin
- 3T honey
- Various fruit flavors. Freeze dried dragonfruit, raspberry, passionfruit etc…
Do small amounts of juice at a time 2 c makes a lot of gummies. If you pasteurize your juice and reduce it the gummies will last longer (not get moldy). I like to use honey if I need to sweeten them more. The gelatin does cut through the flavor a bit. After boiling your juice allow it to cool. Sprinkle over gelatin powder a bit at a time and allow the liquid to soak it up. Once all the gelatin has bloomed turn on very low heat and melt everything together for a couple minutes. Pour into molds and chill before removing.
If you are handing out the gummies to the public it is best to process the gummies in a commercial kitchen. You can do different color gummies and all kinds of fun things. I like to melt the gummies together in small slow cookers that way several flavors can be done at once.
The amount of candy wrappers created for Halloween trick or treating has gotten to be simply absurd. The amounts of sugar, artificial coloring, preserving and flavoring ingredients in highly processed candies has increased considerably over the years. Why are we spending money to buy these health-robbing sweets from across the world when we have these amazingly delicious fruits right here in our backyards? The added bonus being no more discarded sticky candy wrappers all over the streets.
This workshop is a inititive toward utilizing the fruits gleaned from the community over the summer to create delicious, local candies with minimal processing, packaging and transportation costs. This year Lillooet had bumper crops of cherries, strawberries, plums, raspberries and many other mouth watering fruits, although sadly no apricots. Please feel free to set up your own workshops in your own communities. Contact us if you need help.
