July 15 - Gummi Worm Day
We celebrate Gummi Worm Day thanks to the good people at the National Confectioners Association, who dreamed up this holiday.
The first gummi candy was created by Hand Riegel during the 1920s. Riegel was the owner of the German candy company Haribo. Haribo went on to manufacture the first American made gummi candy in 1982. In 1981, another German gummi candy manufacturer called Trolli decided to make the first gummi worm. Gummi worms have become the most popular gummi candy ever made. Edible gelatin, which has been around since the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs, is the basic ingredient in gummi candy.
It would be pretty tough to make your own gummi worms. You would need a blend of corn starch, corn syrup, sugar, gelatin, color and flavor. The ingredients are weighed, mixed and pumped into a special candy cooker, a 128 foot long stainless steel coil that cooks the candy by steam outside of the coil. Then the cooker pumps the gummi into a vacuum chamber to remove excess moisture. From the vacuum chamber, the gummi moves on to a mix station where colors, flavors, acids and fruit concentrates are mixed into the gummi stock. Next, the gummi stock goes into the Mogul, a starch moulding machine pumps the gummi stock into starch filled mould boards that shape the gummi candies. After curing, the gummies are removed from the moulds, packaged, delivered and sold.
You can, however, make a gummi worm cake fairly easily. This treat is sure to please the little ones in your family (although it might gross out the adults, since it’s meant to look like worms crawling in mud). Yummy!