Photography(/Bartending?...): Vodka Gummy Bears

Last week a friend and I stumbled across a recipe for vodka-infused (fancy wording) gummy bears, so I took advantage of another opportunity to see how bad I could fail with my new camera.

Our Monday late-night trip to Hyvee yielded a bottle of borderline cheap vodka, a 3 pound bag of gummy bears (completely unnecessary) and a can of frozen fruit punch concentrate.

If you're interested in actually trying this, feel free to Google the recipe, as I suspect my account of the experience will probably be lacking in terms of instructionality.

When we returned from the store, I dug out a Pyrex bowl (best bowls ever), dumped in some gummy bears, and dumped in some vodka ("some" being a very technical measurement, clearly).

I popped the lid on and stuck them in my fridge for 3 days, pulling them out to stir occasionally and being knocked to the floor by the fumes released when opening the container.  By Thursday, the bears had absorbed the majority of the booze, growing slightly in size.  I used the juice concentrate to mix up some fairly concentrated juice and stirred a cup (real measuring!) into the bears.  Again, they were sealed up and hung out in the fridge for 4 days.

By Sunday night it was time to try it out.  Personally, I wasn't thrilled since I'm not really a mixed drink/hard alcohol/fruity booze person, but I had to sample my creation.

Truth: they were awful.

Imagine the texture of a gummy bear crossed with Jello, and that's what they were like.  Plopping one in your mouth brought out that I'm-not-sure-when-to-stop-chewing-and-swallow sensation.  So that, plus the sugary-booze flavor that I generally dislike, just didn't work for me.  My friend tried her best to power through in the hopes of getting a buzz, but we didn't dump much vodka in to begin with so that failed too.  After getting two down and gagging on the third, I opened a beer and called it quits.

The most entertaining part of the process was watching them grow.

Almost doubled in size!

Oh, and the juice turned them red... except the green bears, which ended up purple.

If you're into Jello and fruity drinks, this is a fun project.  Or, if you're into those things and also into being lazy, feel free to come get these out of my fridge.

Another failed food creation.