Olive Oil Gummy Worms

As our culi­nary team here at The Cooking Lab devel­oped many dif­fer­ent kinds of gels and can­dies for Modernist Cuisine, we tried shap­ing them into a vari­ety of clever, fun, or sur­pris­ing shapes. One approach we like is to use fishing-lure molds, which are sold at many sport­ing goods stores. For this recipe, we used earth­worm molds to make gummy can­dies that look remark­ably like real worms.

–Johnny Zhu, Culinary Research Assistant, The Cooking Lab

 
 

I love gummy worms! I get to eat them at the base­ball game. I usu­ally get them from the candy store.

–Jerry Zhu, age 3½, future Modernist chef

We use fishing-lure molds to cre­ate our creepy crawlers.

What bet­ter time of year than Halloween to make this Modernist treat! In the video below, we show you how to make gummy worms at home (along with cookie crumb dirt!) and how a spe­cial helper can aid in the process.

Additional Tips:

  • Use fishing-lure molds to cre­ate your worms. You can find them at larger sport­ing goods or fish­ing sup­ply stores.
  • To make trans­par­ent worms, put the filled molds in a cham­ber vac­uum sealer; oth­er­wise, they will be opaque (although the taste will be the same).
  • The worms will be more trans­par­ent if you also take care to let in as lit­tle air as pos­si­ble while emul­si­fy­ing the mixture. If you are not using a cham­ber vac­uum sealer, you can remelt the mix­ture after it has set to remove more of the air.
  • Even if you do use a cham­ber vac­uum sealer, you may still end up with cloudy worms if you over­cook the mix­ture. If too much water evap­o­rates, the ratio of water to gelatin skews away from the optimum.
  • You can also use other mold shapes; one of our read­ers tried mak­ing cute, speck­led owls. The recipe will work with any shape, but shal­low molds tend to work best.
  • Be sure to dis­perse the gelatin com­pletely. If it is not dis­persed prop­erly, your gummy worms may have a tacky texture.
  • Use the full 20 g of gum ara­bic we call for. It may seem like a lot, but this will give your worms a tex­ture that is eas­ier to handle.
  • Fully emul­sify the olive oil into the gelatin mix­ture by using a hand­held immer­sion blender or a rotor-stator homogenizer.
  • Lightly spray your molds with cook­ing oil before cast­ing. This will help you remove them once your worms have set.
  • Use a bam­boo skewer to help remove the worms from their molds.
  • Grind choco­late cook­ies in a food proces­sor to make your “dirt.” About six pulses of the blade should do the trick.

Covered in chocolate-cookie ‘dirt’ the worms look delight­fully real.

Injection molds are less messy and eas­ier to use than other kinds, and they pro­duce per­fectly round worms.

It is all right if the can­dies pull and stretch a lit­tle bit when you take them out of their molds. Remember, they are gum­mies; they are sup­posed to do that!

Spray your mold lightly with cook­ing spray before fill­ing. If you still encounter dif­fi­culty remov­ing your worms, try using a bam­boo skewer to pull them out.

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