How to downsample a texture?

Homemade gummies with the same texture as storebought

• Help me make home made gummies/gumdrops/sweedish fish that have the same or at least very similar texture to store bought ones. It is my birthday next week. If you can help me with this you'd be giving me the best birthday present ever. The reason why I need to make my own is because the storebought ones invariably give me a bad stomach ache. I suspect it is a gluten thing, but I could just be reacting to some other ingredient in the gummies. Before I write all gummies off as a "Never Again" thing I want to try to make them myself at home. Before anyone suggests it, the Jell-o with extra gelatin gummies people pimp online are not what I am looking for. Every description I have read make them sound more rubbery than gummy, and there are always a lot of comments saying how the texture is different from storebought. I figure since I hate Jell-o and since I extra hate Jell-o jigglers, those would probably be small bits of hell to me. Maybe there is some other ingredient I could add to the jell-o recipe to keep it from being rubbery and be closer to the texture I'm looking for? My best case scenario would be a sweedish fish texture. They are solid, not sticky, but can be pulled apart and have a really satisfying bite. Gumdrop texture, you know? I'd prefer not to have the sugar coated kind, but I am willing to give on that if it means I can have some gummies. I also would love to make a properly authentic gummy bear type thing but my priority is more gumdrop/sweedish fish/dinosour type candies. Oh, and licorice. That stuff gives me LEGENDARY stomach aches (definitely the gluten in this case) so if you have a killer copy cat recipe for cherry licorice please pass that along as well. I tried http://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/gluten-free-red-cherry-licorice/ but it just ended up like weird cherry-ish toffee or something. Tasty, but NOT licorice. This is my deepest birthday wish. Please help. I miss candy so much. I miss candy more than I miss pan rolls, and I REALLY miss pan rolls.

• Answer:

  Maybe http://candy.about.com/od/candyglossary/g/def_patesfruit.htm? Done with pectin. A bit of work, but not too challenging technically. Also mind-blowingly delicious. I am a fruit gummy nut and pâtes de fruits scratch the itch for me. But a bit more "Ooh, I can taste the fresh raspberries" than "This is just like Swedish fish." They are sugar coated; you can cut the extra sweetness from that, if that's objectionable, with a bit of citric acid mixed in with the 'sanding sugar' for the exterior. I have made a number of things on candy.about.com and think it's a solid source of recipes, but unfortunately everything there titled 'gummy' leads one straight off into the six boxes of Jell-O problem and I side with your skepticism. The major manufacturers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gummy_bear#Ingredients_and_production but with other things that don't seem to show up in the gummy recipes on-line, most notably starch. If you scroll down http://www.sugarcraft.com/catalog/candies/gummy/gummy.htm to "JELLY / GUMMY CANDY from scratch" there is a recipe that uses pectin; I have no first-hand experience with it, though.