My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine: Berry Gummy Hearts

Rory and I love doing crafts together and he LOVES to help me in the kitchen. Whenever I cook he will run to to me and say, "I see too! I see too!" He needs to know what I'm cooking and what his helping job will be. He has excellent stirring skills.

Although, we aren't huge on celebrating Valentine's Day I saw this recipe and I thought it would be a fun way to celebrate. The original recipe is posted here. I prepped all the ingredients the night before so Rory could do the work of "cutting" out the gummies the next day.

You will need:

1 12 ounce bag of frozen raspberries, thawed

1 cup apple juice

5 envelopes of unflavored gelatin

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup light corn syrup

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Puree the raspberries and run through a strainer to separate the seeds. Throw the seeds away. Mix apple juice and gelatin in a microwaveable bowl. Stir in sugar and corn syrup. I microwaved in 3-30 second intervals stirring well in between each set. Let stand for about 5 minutes. Then stir in raspberry puree and lemon juice. Pour into a square baking pan lined with plastic wrap. Cover with wax paper and chill. I prepped mine the night before so it chilled all night. It will look like this when you take it out of the refrigerator.

Flip out of the pan and onto a cutting board.

Since it's a V-day craft I was supposed to use small heart shaped cutters. I had all intention of stopping at Hobby Lobby to pick up a couple but it started snowing a couple hours before rush hour so I skipped that step. On this particular day I was happy to get us both home in one piece! This did leave me in a bit of a pickle because I didn't have any small cookie cutters. I was going to use the plastic medicine cups that come with children's liquid medicine but those still seemed big for a gummy.

We ended up using the big end of a cake decorating tip. It was the perfect size for Rory to maneuver and created a gummy the perfect size for popping right in your mouth!