Homemade Gummy Worms
Easy Homemade Gummy Worms Recipe
How to Make Gummy Worms with Jell-o and Gelatin
These sweet and chewy homemade gummy worms look and taste like the real deal! Seriously, I’ve made plenty of homemade gummies before, but these are not your average DIY gummy. Better yet, they’re amazingly quick and easy to prepare. I’ll show you how to make gummy worms with just boxed Jell-o mix, plain gelatin, and water!
Gummies can be fun to make at home, and the do-it-yourself approach puts you in control of the ingredients that go into them. But sometimes they can be frustrating to make, or they don’t turn out quite right—maybe too chewy and gelatinous, other times not chewy enough. Still, gummies are way more doable and less complicated than trying to make legit homemade candy!
This time, I wanted to make homemade gummy worms to use in my DIY pudding dirt cups, making everything from scratch. So, I found the perfect worm-shaped silicone molds, with the classic ridges and all. I started looking through gummy recipes I’ve made before. But I wondered, how to make gummy worms that are satisfyingly sweet, vibrant, and chewy like the actual candies?
The answer was surprisingly simple: combine boxed Jell-o with plain gelatin! The Jell-o provides the sweetness, flavor, and color all in one, while the plain gelatin adds that classic, must-have chewiness that we know and love in the real worms. Most importantly, these homemade gummy worms are so simple and fun to make—and even more fun to eat!
Homemade Gummy Worms Ingredients Notes:
Boxed Jell-o
The beauty of using Jell-o is that you can easily switch up the flavor and color of your worms depending on what you like! Just be sure to use an entire big box (6oz) of Jell-o, or combine 2 small boxes (3oz each). Personally, I doubled the recipe and made 2 separate batches of homemade gummy worms for variety—one batch of green/lime flavored, and one batch of orange/peach flavored.
Unflavored Gelatin
Typically, you can find this in the baking aisle at the grocery store, and it’s often sold in a box with anywhere from 4 to 12 small packets (0.25oz each) in it. This is essential to give your homemade gummy worms a truly chewy, gummy, candy-like texture, and I haven’t yet tried making this recipe with any substitutes. You could nix it and fill up your silicone molds with the Jell-o alone, you’ll just have jiggly Jell-o worms instead.
How to Make Gummy Worms at Home
First and foremost, make sure that you’ve got silicone molds at the ready with the desired shape that you want to make your gummy candies. I made these homemade gummy worms with some fantastic silicone worm molds that I ordered online, but you can really use this recipe to make any shapes that you want!
The process for how to make gummy worms is simple—starting with adding the dry boxed Jell-o mix and the dry unflavored gelatin packets into a saucepan. (Not over the stove, just at room temperature for now!) Then, pour in the water and whisk everything to combine. Allow that mixture to rest at room temperature for 5-10 minutes.
Next, transfer to the stovetop and heat your mixture over medium-low heat, whisking continuously until the powdered Jell-o and gelatin have fully dissolved and melted. Finally, remove from the heat and get to work filling your silicone gummy molds! Personally, I used a small dropper/syringe when making my homemade gummy worms to make it easier to fill the worm-shaped molds.
Once filled, transfer the molds into the refrigerator to chill until set—about 15-20 minutes. Then, quick and simple as that, you’ve got deliciously chewy, wiggly homemade gummy worms ready to peel out of the molds and enjoy! I could devour an entire batch of these on their own, they’re so good. A great option for homemade Halloween candy, DIY dirt cups, or just having some fun in the kitchen!
Homemade Gummy Worms Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 box 6 oz flavored Jell-o of choice*
- 3 packets 0.25 oz ea. unflavored gelatin
- ⅔ cup water
Instructions
- Pour flavored Jell-o and unflavored gelatin packets into saucepan, then and add liquid and whisk to combine. Allow to sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes.
- Heat mixture in saucepan over medium-low heat, whisking continuously until melted and dissolved.
- Remove from heat and transfer mixture into silicone gummy worm molds, or silicone molds of choice. (I use a dropper/syringe to make this easier for me, adding ~5mL of liquid per gummy worm cavity.)
- Chill filled molds in refrigerator until hardened. (This should only take around 15-20 minutes.)
- Once set, peel gummy candies from molds and enjoy!
- Store gummies in the fridge in an airtight container, or leave them in the molds and cover until ready to remove and enjoy. Lasts up to 7 days.
- Yields 40 gummy worms. (Filled 2 of my silicone gummy molds.)
Notes
Note on Jell-o:
Use whichever flavor/color of boxed Jell-o that you want! Just be sure to use an entire large box (6oz) of Jell-o, or you can combine 2 small boxes (3oz each) of the same color. Be careful trying to mix/swirl different colors—they may bleed together and turn brown-ish. If you want different colored worms, you can do as I did: double the recipe and prepare 2 separate batches of worms, using a different color/flavor of boxed Jell-o to make each.Embracing Food Freedom
What does “food freedom” mean to you? Whether you’re struggling with yo-yo dieting, bingeing and restricting, or just wanting to make peace with food, enroll in my Food Freedom course to explore what food freedom can look like in your life!
12 Comments on “Homemade Gummy Worms”
you can make these with sugar-free jello for diabetic candies. I add fresh lemon juice for extra flavour. If you the gummies are too sweet using 2/3 cup of water, add 1/3 cup and extra packet of unflavoured jello to ‘tone it down’.
Yes! You can absolutely make these with sugar-free Jello if you’d like to make sugar-free gummy worms at home. Great idea & suggestion! Thank you for sharing the adjustments you made to the recipe so others can try them out as well 🙂
The idea looks great but can use sugar free jello
Hi Sue! Although we haven’t tried making our homemade gummy worms with sugar free Jell-O yet, it should work just fine in this recipe. We’d love to know how they turn out if you do give it a try 🙂
Tasted like jello. Good consistency, easy to make. Of course the picky 5 year old didn’t like them
Hi Beth, thank you for trying our homemade gummy worms recipe! So glad to hear that they were easy to make and that you liked the consistency. Pretty fun and satisfying for a homemade candy recipe 🙂 We wish these gummies could’ve earned the 5-year-old’s approval, but we respect and celebrate that they’re in tune with their preferences!
They were good but very stickey is there any thing I could do about that
Hi Jackie, thanks so much for trying out this homemade gummy worms recipe! Because these are made with plain gelatin, they can turn out a bit sticky, and unfortunately we don’t have a clear “fix” for that. (Most store-bought gummy worm candies use additives to reduce the stickiness and create a more matte texture.) However, we find that keeping them stored in their molds in the fridge helps to reduce the stickiness as much as possible 🙂
These taste just like store bought!
Right?! These homemade gummy worms turn out SO surprisingly yummy, gummy and chewy! 🙂
We made these today – lemon/lime gummies – the kids really like them. Thanks for a super easy recipe to follow.
Hi Racquel, I’m so glad to hear that these homemade gummy worms turned out well for you & your family! This is one of our favorite DIY recipes ever 🙂 Thanks so much for giving the recipe a try & sharing how it went with us!