Sour Patch Kid

18 November 2007

After four years of college I have found myself back at my parents’ house for a month with no job.
So what better way to spend my time than eating, napping, and making a monster sized Sour Patch Kid?!

First I made a positive mold out of air-drying clay. This is what I hoped the final product would look like:

Then I mixed up some Plaster of Paris to make the negative mold and poured it over the clay man.

I let the mold sit for 24 hours– here is the finished mold covered in plastic wrap to keep the candy from getting gross:

I found a recipe for gumdrops that used fruit pectin as a gelling agent. Here are the ingredients, and please ignore the very, very dirty wall behind themÂ…

I boiled sugar and corn syrup in one pot and in the other pot combined the remaining ingredients. I used lemon juice and three packets of Kool-Aid to make it as sour as possible, since that is of course the most important part of a Sour Patch Kid.

In the mold, setting for 24 hours:

After coming out of the mold– lookin delicious, little man!

I did some research into the sour sugar they put on Sour Patch Kids — it’s made of sugar and citric acid. I don’t have much citric acid lying around, so I used some lemon Koolaid with the sugar to make it sour. Turns out citric acid is the main ingredient of Kool-Aid. Who knew acid could be so delicious??