Jolly Rancher (and Life Saver) Lego Men

The children having tired of eating gummy Lego men, I decided it was time to turn up the heat, and try melting a few hard candies in the oven.

My plan was to load the mold with crunched up Jolly Ranchers in the same yellow, red, and blue pattern we had used for our gummies.  Unfortunately the package of original flavored Jolly Ranchers I'd picked up for the project didn't contain any yellow candies.  There are lemon flavored Jolly Ranchers, just not in the original flavor pack.

I had decided to use green candies for the heads (alien Lego men?), when I realized we had a couple of packs of tropical Lifesavers - which do have yellow candies...

...and just like that, we were back in business.

We placed the candies into heavy duty bags, and hammered them into pieces on a hard surface. Unlike hammering the frozen juice for our "snow cones", we punctured the bags as we hammered the candy.  

Rather than pour the candy into bowls, we just handled the punctured bags with care, and moved on - filling our mold with the candy pieces, melting them in the oven for about 5 minutes, or until the candy was completely melted, at 350°F, then allowing them to cool, and harden back down before removing them from the mold.

Our first batch of men looked a little like murder victims, as we had allowed small bits of the red candy to mix in with the yellow while we were filling the mold.

 

 We used a popsicle stick to keep the colors separate, starting with the yellow... 

...then tilting the stick to add the red.

The resulting men were still a little messy, but with cleaner faces.

Not that any of them lingered long enough on the plate to really be looked at.