Homemade Red Licorice Recipe - Take 2

After 24 hours of hardening, or seasoning time, our first licorice attempt retained a taffy like texture. And, 24 hours is as long as the batch lasted. We really like taffy, and it's been quite a while, since we've been to the coast to pick up any of the salt water variety. But, as it was licorice, and not taffy we were trying for, we decided to press on with another recipe.

This time, we went for an easy, no cook, gelatin heavy recipe, that is really a combination of a number of recipes we found floating around the Internet.

We dissolved 1 package of sugar free, cherry flavored gelatin, 1 and a half packages of sugar free raspberry flavored gelatin, and two packages of unflavored gelatin in two cups of boiling water. Then, we added 2 teaspoons of anise extract.

We poured the liquid into a 9x9 cake pan, and put it into the fridge to set up.

Finally, we cut it into strips, and gave it a try.

As you might have already guessed, the resulting "candy" was more akin to a black licorice flavored Jell-O Jiggler, than to commercially produced red licorice. I would put it down as a complete flop (I'm not a huge fan of black licorice, or Jell-O jigglers), except that with all the sugar free ingredients, it's at least low calorie. And, do you remember, that scene from one of the Star Trek movies, where Data, with his new emotion chip, downs some kind of revolting drink, and then instantly asks for another? That, was kind of our response to this gummy, licorice concoction - we really hated it, but we just couldn't stop eating it!

It's great to be a homeschooler.