My seven-year-old daughter, Boo, loves to bake. Working with her in the kitchen to create something new is one the best ways to spend quality time with her, so we were excited to try the Make Your Own Gummies Kit from Verve, Inc. 

The kit costs $13.95 and gives you the opportunity to do something fun as a family, or with one of your kids, or however you decide to use it. It contains everything you need to make one batch of all natural sour gummies from seaweed: simple step-by-step instructions, sour mix, naturally colored and flavored Fair Trade sugar, powdered seaweed, dried seaweed, and molding starch to make your own candy molds.

It also comes with a sweet story about a girl named Divina in the Philippines whose family has a seaweed farm. The story tells us a bit about how they grow the seaweed, what types of things it’s used for, and how using seaweed instead of gelatin in the gummies helps support Divina and families like hers. 

Making these gummies took about half an hour, plus the time they took to cool in the fridge. I was a little nervous when I saw all the steps, so I called in my husband to help because I’m a horrible cook and burn simple meals like cheesy potatoes, while he can whip up gourmet sushi as easy as - well, not pie, because that’s not very easy. 

It turned out to not be too complicated of a process, but while the kit is intended for ages eight and up (with adult supervision recommended), it really felt like the type of project for kids and parents to work on together. That said, I suppose tweens or teens who are fairly experienced in the kitchen may enjoy using the kit themselves. 

The process of using seaweed that you boil until the carrageenan is extracted was a really neat experience and we were all fascinated to watch it work. We think we may have done something wrong, though, because the end result solidified super quickly, before we even had the chance to get very much of it poured into the molds.

Boo loved making her own little molds for the gummies. Unfortunately, even in the spots where we were able to pour the gummy solution in before it solidified, the shapes she tried to make in the starch mostly ended up coming out as blobs. Also, after you pull the gummies out of the molding starch, you have to wipe them with a damp rag to get the starch off. Boo got pretty frustrated trying to get them all the way clean, but she’s only seven, so an older child or adult might have had an easier time of it.  

The kit comes with some sour powder to coat the gummies in once they’re made, if you so choose. Boo initially wanted to only make half of them sour, but after trying one gummy without the powder, she decided to coat them all. 

The instructions mentioned that the gummies would be softer than store bought gummies, and that was definitely true. None of us were really a huge fan of the texture, but the flavor wasn’t bad, especially once they were covered in the sour mix. As a note, I couldn’t find anywhere in the directions that specifically say this, but if you have any gummies that you don’t eat right away, be sure to store them in the fridge because ours got all melty overnight and were ruined. 

All in all, I’m glad that we had the opportunity to use this kit. Boo had a good time, and we enjoyed getting to try something new. I also appreciated the fact that it was supporting seaweed farmers in the Philippines, plus seaweed was a new ingredient for us to work with and that was a fun experience. 

-Product review by Heather Kelley, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, April, 2017