A Hard Candy Christmas: Advent 2023 DAY 5

Most of you might not equate today's candy with the holidays. But for me as a kid, I knew Christmas was coming when I got to buy Gummi Bears. (And no- it's not mispelling it. Americans are mispelling it by calling them Gummy Bears!)

In the Crabtree area of Raleigh, there used to be a gourmet shop called A Southern Season. Every year my parents would go to A Southern Season to buy fancy chocolates, snacks and wine for their holiday office parties and gifts for family and friends. With this annual trip, I always got a chance to buy a giant bag of Gummi Bears.

You might not believe it but until probably the early 90s, it wasn't easy finding these chewy treats. The only way I could get Gummies was to go to a gourmet shop and purchase them by the pound. You'd have to take a flimsy plastic bag and a pewter scoop and portion out your gummies. This meant being able to get only the flavors I loved; which were the pineapple and lemon ones. Occasionally a red one or an orange Gummi would sneak in. That was okay. It just meant that I'd eat those first.

Jump ahead to the 90s. My trips to A Southern Season had stopped. But I was covered as Gummi Bears started to be available in vac-sealed packages and sold in convenience stores and big box stores like K-Mart. With the prevalence of Gummies came a revolution in the confection genre. Gummies were now in the shape of worms, sharks and my favorite, cola bottles. 

The cola bottle gummies came in 2 forms. There's the traditional dark brown with clear topped Gummi called Happy Cola, that tasted like jellied Coca-Cola. But if you got lucky, you come across version 2.0, known as Fizzy Colas. These bottles were dusted with sugar and powdered CO2 popping candy. That way when you ate these cola bottles, they fizzed in your mouth like a an iced cold Coke. Far superior than the original but much harder to find, these cola gummies are so worth searching for.

For today's Advent present, I'm sharing with you the process on how they make gummi candies. Every video I saw on Youtube promises the secrets of making Gummi bears. Yet for some reason, only the steps behind making Gummi Worms are ever shown. Not sure why that is. Proprietary secret? If that's the case, then why show how any type of gummi candy is made. Regardless of not being able to find videos on making Gummi Bears, I imagine that the process is pretty much the same. If I'm wrong, I apologize and hope you'll find your Gummi Bear making tips somewhere.

Until then-Enjoy!