Homemade Gumdrops — 🎄❤️💚 Skip the store-bought gumdrops and make them at home instead! This EASY recipe makes soft and chewy gumdrops that are flavored three ways! They’re perfect for gifting because you can make them in advance and people always ADORE these old-fashioned gumdrops!
Easy Homemade Gumdrop Candies Recipe
My grandma always had a candy dish in her living room with gumdrops in it and as a little girl, I couldn’t wait to lift the dome on the candy dish and plop a handful of gumdrops in my mouth. So I’ll always have a sweet spot for them. Pun intened.
Gumdrops are so easy to make at home using just water, gelatin, and your favorite extracts. If you’re looking for a nostalgic no-bake Christmas candy recipe, this one is perfect to make for the holidays!
Here’s why you’re family is bound to love this gumdrop candy recipe:
- It’s customizable. Do you prefer cinnamon gumdrops to peppermint gumdrops, or vice versa? You can make the gumdrops all one flavor or make a mixed batch like I did. I used cinnamon, mint, and peppermint extracts.
- They can be made in advance. Gumdrops candies should last 7 days at room temperature, making them ideal for preparing before holiday gatherings or cookie exchanges. You can likely get away with even longer since the sugar will naturally help preserve them.
- They’re perfect for gifting. Homemade gumdrops are an unexpected treat to receive around the holidays, and everyone loves their nostalgic flavor and festive colors!
Ingredients for Flavored Homemade Gumdrops
Making Christmas gumdrops from scratch requires a handful of easy-to-find ingredients, including the following:
- Unflavored gelatin
- Water
- Granulated sugar
- Cinnamon oil – Cinnamon oil is different than cinnamon extract and I find that the oil is more potent than the extract. (Make sure it’s food grade and not the kind you use in a room diffuser.) This is what I use for red gumdrops.
- Mint extract – is typically a blend of spearmint and peppermint extracts and is not as potent as peppermint extract. This is for the green gumdrops
- Peppermint extract – should be pure peppermint extract, not a blend. I use this for the clear or uncolored gumdrops.
- Red food coloring and green food coloring – I prefer gel food coloring because it’s more concentrated and the colors just look nicer
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Gumdrops from Scratch
If you’ve made Jello from a box mix before, then you can definitely handle this gumdrops recipe which also features gelatin. The recipe steps are simple to follow, but they’re repeated three times to create the three different flavors of gumdrops.
Much more detail is provided in the recipe card below, but here is an overview.
Red/Cinnamon Gumdrops:
- In a small bowl, combine ½ cup water and three envelopes of unflavored gelatin.
- Separately, to a large saucepan, add ¾ cup water and 1 ½ cups granulated sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat, and once boiling stir in the gelatin mixture from the bowl. Then, simmer over low heat for 5 minutes and until the gelatin dissolves.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat. Stir in 2 drops of cinnamon oil and a few drops of red food coloring.
- Pour the mixture into a greased 8×8-inch baking pan. Chill for 3 hours before slicing in small pieces and placing the pieces on parchment paper.
- Chill for another 8 hours (overnight) before rolling the individual gumdrops in sugar in a large baking dish. You could also cut the gumdrops into fun shapes using metal cookie cutters!
For Green/Spearmint Gumdrops:
Repeat steps 1 through 4, but instead of using cinnamon oil you’ll want to use spearmint extract and green food coloring in step 4.
For the Clear/Peppermint Drops:
Repeat steps 1 through 4, but instead of using cinnamon oil you’ll want to use peppermint extract and in steps 4 and I omitted any food coloring.
A Note About Flavoring the Gumdrops
The peppermint extract, mint extract, and cinnamon oil are NOT blended together to create a single flavor of gumdrop. You have to cook three separate batches of the sugar, water, and gelatin mixture and stir in ONE of the flavors each time to make the three different flavors of gumdrops. And I used red food coloring for cinnamon gumdrops, green food coloring for spearmint, and did not color the batch of peppermint and left it natural or “clear”.
You could arbitrarily reverse which minty version you color green, and add green food coloring to the peppermint batch and leave the spearmint batch clear; or color them both green if you don’t care which mint is which.
Want to make fruity flavored gumdrops? You can. See the FAQs below.
Recipe FAQs
Yes, to create red-colored cinnamon gum drops and green-colored mint gumdrops, you must use both the red and green food coloring. There’s no way around this, unless you want to omit the food coloring altogether and make clear-colored gumdrops.
Use a food grade cinnamon oil that I have found at Walmart, on Amazon or at my local supermarket. Do NOT use a cinnamon essential oil like the kind you put into a room diffuser or use for scenting candles.
Yes you can, but cinnamon extract is less potent than cinnamon oil and you may need to use a bit more, but you will need to experiment.
Yes, you can use one or both of the mint extracts depending on your preferences. I like using both and make one batch green and leave the other colorless, but you can stick to making just one kind of mint gumdrop in addition to the cinnamon gumdrops.
Yes! For any type of red fruit such as strawberry, cherry, berry, raspberry, etc. I would use red food coloring and purchase a corresponding flavor of extract. You will probably have to purchase something like strawberry extract online, but it exists.
Lemon gumdrops would be an easy one with yellow food color and lemon extract, both of which are readily sold in most any grocery store. The same holds for other citrus flavors of gumdrops like orange or lime and the corresponding liquid food coloring and flavoring.
I am sure you can, although I have only poured my liquid mixture into 8×8-inch pans. But I’m sure some cute silicone molds would be fine.
If your gumdrops started to sweat or weep after being stored in an airtight container, that’s okay! They’re still fine to eat. Just toss them in a mixture of powdered sugar and granulated sugar to restore their candied appearance. And/or unseal your airtight container for a bit and let some air flow to naturally dry them out a bit.
I tested this recipe using traditional gelatin, so that’s what I recommend using. You can try substituting it with a vegan gelatin alternative, but I have no idea how the gumdrops will turn out.
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- 9 envelopes unflavored gelatin
- 1 ½ cup water, divided
- 2 ¼ cups water, divided
- 4 ½ cups granulated sugar, divided
- 2 drops cinnamon oil, or to taste
- 2 to 4 drops red food coloring, or as desired (I recommend gel food coloring)
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon mint extract, or to taste
- 2 to 4 drops green food coloring, or as desired (I recommend gel food coloring)
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon peppermint extract, or to taste
- 2 cups granulated sugar, for coating, or as necessary
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Spray 3 separate 8×8-inch baking pans with cooking spray; set aside. Tips – If you are only making 2 colors/flavors rather than 3 and want to make one color/flavor as a double quantity (like double the amount of mint vs cinnamon), you will spray one 9×13-inch pan for your mint and another 8×8-inch pan for the remaining color/flavor). A 9×13 basically holds the equivalent of two 8×8 pans. I mention this because it’s unlikely the average home cook has 3 separate 8×8-inch pans, but chances are you DO have one 9×13 and one 8×8 so in that case.
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Grab 3 small bowls and add 1/2 cup water to each bowl.
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Sprinkle 3 envelopes of gelatin over each of the 3 bowls of water (so you’re using 9 packets total). Set bowls of water + gelatin aside.
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Separately, in a small saucepan, bring ¾ cup of water and 1 ½ cups of sugar to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.
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After sugar has dissolved, add one bowl of water + gelatin , reduce the heat to medium-low, sti, and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
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For Red/Cinnamon Gumdrops – Remove the pan from the heat, add 2 drops cinnamon oil and add 2-4 drops of red food coloring, stir, check the color, and add additional drops of food coloring as desired. Pour this mixture into one of the 8×8-inch pans. Place in the refrigerator, uncovered, for 3 hours. Repeat this process in steps 4 and 5, and then customize step 6 for the other colors/flavors of gumdrops.
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For Green/Spearmint Gumdrops – Repeat the process of steps 4 and 5. Remove the pan from the heat, add the spearmint extract, add 2-4 drops of green food coloring, stir, check the color, and add additional drops of food coloring as desired. Pour this mixture into one of the 8×8-inch pans. Place in the refrigerator, uncovered, for 3 hours. Repeat this process for final flavor.
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For Natural “Clear”/Peppermint Gumdrops – Repeat the process of steps 4 and 5. Remove the pan from the heat, add the peppermint extract, and stir. Tips – Peppermint extract tends to be more potent than spearmint so be careful so you don’t make them too minty and potent. I don’t add food coloring for the peppermint flavor and leave it natural (clear), but you can add green food coloring if you’d like. Pour this mixture into one of the 8×8-inch pans. Place in the refrigerator, uncovered, for 3 hours.
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Chilling – All the pans should stay in your refrigerate to chill for 3 hours, or until well set. I do not cover mine.
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Cutting – After 3 hours or so (make sure they are very well set), run a paring knife or butter knife around the edge of each of the pans. Now cut each pan into 4 large squares. Using a spatula, lift out each of the 4 large squares per pan, and place them onto parchment paper.
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Using a sharp knife, cut each square into smaller pieces of candy, however big or small you want your gumdrops. Tip – You can use small cookie cutters if you’d like to cut them out into cute and festive shapes, if desired.
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Overnight at Room Temp – All the gumdrops to sit on the parchment paper, overnight for about 8 hours, on your counter. Do not try to shortchange this process, do it in the fridge/freezer, just do as I recommend, on your counter, overnight.
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Sugaring – The next day, pour about 2 cups of sugar into shallow bowl or casserole dish, and place the gumdrops squares into it. Toss them around to coat with sugar; do this in batches as necessary. Place them back on parchment paper to rest and let the sugar absorb while you coat all the batches. Serve and enjoy.
Extracts/Oils: Be careful using extracts like this. 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract is nothing! Whereas the same amount of mint extract can be very potent, depending on the brand. Start with 1/4 teaspoon and work your way up. Spearmint or just what’s often simply called ‘mint’ extract tends to be more mild than peppermint extract. Be the most careful with peppermint extract. If you want to use cinnamon extract rather than cinnamon oil, that’s fine. Use what you can find. However, the reverse is not true – I would not use mint oils. I fear they would be overly minty and too strong to really enjoy and so stick with mint extracts. All flavoring should be added to taste (yours); start slowly and add more as needed.
Food color: I prefer gel food coloring in general and that’s what I tested this recipe with and what I keep on hand. All food colors vary in their final intensity. Add enough drops as you desire to achieve the desired shade.
Storage: Gumdrops will keep airtight for about 1 week at room temp, potentially a bit longer. I don’t recommend storing them in the fridge nor freezing them. Room temp is best. As time passes, if they start to “sweat” or weep a little, add a little powdered sugar to some granulated sugar and toss them again. Exact amounts will depend on how weepy they are. Also consider making cracking the seal on your airtight container a bit and allowing them to have some natural air circulating. Winter air tends to be quite dry and you may be able to fix the weepy issue with less sugar if you allow more air to circulate.
Serving: 1gumdrop, Calories: 72kcal, Carbohydrates: 19g, Protein: 0.1g, Fat: 0.1g, Sodium: 1mg, Potassium: 1mg, Fiber: 0.1g, Sugar: 19g, Vitamin A: 0.3IU, Vitamin C: 0.004mg, Calcium: 2mg, Iron: 0.02mg
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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