- Oh, I see.
There was just another lid on it.
But where am I...
[laughs]
[bouncy music]
[laughs]
Hey everyone, I'm Claire,
I'm in the BA Test Kitchen,
and today I'm making gourmet Jelly Belly.
[bouncy music]
In general, Jelly Bellys to me are just
like fancy nouveau jelly beans.
At least when I was a kid,
there was like social capital
in having certain flavors of
Jelly Belly in the lunchroom,
butter popcorn, there was like
a lot of cachet around that.
I know that Jelly Belly
has dozens of flavors.
Oh, the smell is terrible.
The best thing you can
say about Jelly Belly
is that they're novelty,
and so there's kind of a playfulness
to identifying the flavors.
I can't even tell what this is.
I think it's supposed to be vanilla.
This one I think is either
sour apple or green apple.
What's the difference?
This one is actually lime.
Mixed berry smoothie, I'm
gonna put that one back.
Is there a root beer?
Yeah, I actually remember kinda liking
the A&W Root Beer ones.
This one's not bad, I kinda like it.
They're so small, and
the coating around it,
it's much more of a kind of crumbly,
firm, but yielding, shell.
It's pretty waxy.
I wonder if it's like mostly made of wax.
It could be fun to pick flavors
completely out of the ordinary,
and ones that I've never
tried on gourmet makes.
Oh, wait, are these sours?
I'm kind of into the sours.
They're not that good.
These would not pass the Cosmo Music test.
What happened here, you drop this?
They got a little mixed
up, [laughs] way to go.
Okay wait, let's play a game.
I'm gonna pick it out for you,
and you tell me what flavor it is.
- Okay.
- No, no, don't look.
- Like Dr. Pepper soda or something.
- Dr. Pepper.
Gaby, oh my god, you're good.
- I know, I love this game.
- Try this one.
- Okay.
Pineapple, no?
- Very, very close.
Pina colada.
- Pina colada, there you go.
- This one's really hard.
- Canteloupe.
- Yes, oh my god.
- Thank you.
- Gaby.
- Thank you, I won.
- You never get a jelly bean
that's like subtly flavored.
It's always like some wild,
weird, amped up version
that's very artificial-tasting.
- Yeah, I'm kind of feeling like,
ditch the fruit flavors, and
taking on the least good ones,
and do like the--
- Like creamy, caramel-y type situation?
Chocolatey.
- Could do the caramel,
could do there's like a cinnamon,
more herbal kind of
things, that could be cool.
- But yeah, stay away from
like the bastardized fruit flavors.
- Yes.
I wanna see if the interior
is white slash transparent,
and then the exterior is the colored part.
I just chipped off every piece
of outer coating on this pink jelly bean,
and basically I can't tell,
because it looks a tiny
bit pink, but mostly clear.
All right, I think this one
is definitely blue in the inside.
Actually, it's not blue at all,
it's more burgundy-colored.
The interiors of different
Jelly Bellys are different.
Some are white, some are clear,
some have a slight color to them,
but the color isn't necessarily
the color on the outside.
I don't think I have to worry
about matching the color of
the interior to the exterior,
I just need to worry about
getting the flavor in there.
And then if I incorporate wax,
I think I can add coloring to
the wax itself and melt it,
and use that as the coating,
and then I won't have that
same problem I encountered
with M&M's where the color just
did not coat evenly at all.
Time for my favorite part,
reading the ingredients.
Sugar, corn syrup, modified food starch,
contains 2% or less of the following,
peach puree concentrate, blueberry puree,
lemon puree, orange
puree, strawberry puree,
watermelon juice concentrate,
apple juice concentrate,
cherry juice concentrate,
lime juice concentrate,
tangerine juice concentrate,
pear juice concentrate,
coconut, sodium citrate, sodium lactate,
citric acid, tapioca dextrin,
natural and artificial flavors,
color added, red 40 lake,
yellow five and six lake,
blue one and two lake,
yellow five and six,
red 40, blue one, turmeric color,
beeswax, carnauba wax,
confectioner's glaze, salt.
It might be one of the most unlikely,
improbable ingredient
lists I've ever read.
I am impressed that there is
allegedly actual fruit puree.
All right, I'm gonna go
over to Gaby's computer,
and do a little bit of research,
and see what I can find.
- [Video Narrator] Jelly beans
are an American candy staple,
and Jelly Belly is the most
recognizable name making them.
Since then, we currently--
- The dreaded cornstarch
mold, I'm pretty sure.
- [Video Narrator] The
slurry consists of water,
corn starch, sugar, and corn syrup,
which is guided through pipes
and into a machine called the mogul.
The mogul creates the jelly bean mold
by filling wooden trays
with dry corn starch,
and making an impression
of the candy into it.
The trays pass through the mogul,
and the slurry is injected
into the candy impressions.
- So I learned a lot.
It takes so long to make
them because they basically
have to go through like an
elaborate drying process
in heated rooms at various
stages in the process
so that they get that chewy texture.
Then I saw a lot about the coating,
and how they get that on there,
and it's sort of a multi-stage
process that takes a while.
The main ingredients in the centers
are corn syrup, sugar, and corn starch.
The main parts of this are
the chewy center with flavor,
the coating with flavor,
so I think I'm gonna start
with making the molds.
I'm gonna try to do something similar
to what they do in the factory
where I make it out of corn starch.
- [Cameraman] Let's do it.
- Okay, I don't know how though.
[bouncy music]
Nobody sneeze over here,
'cause there's about
to be a ton of corn starch all over.
I'm trying to smooth out an
even layer of corn starch.
[laughs] The candies set inside the molds,
they get turned out of
the molds and broken up,
and all the corn starch falls away,
and it doesn't really
leave any kind of textures.
Oh, damn it.
Maybe it has to be done quickly?
Not bad.
The problem is that making one impression
sort of shifts one next to it.
The displacement from one mold
is kind of shifting the corn starch
around next to another mold,
and changing the shape.
So I have to come up with a means
of getting a bunch of jelly beans lined up
on a single plane, and then being able
to impress it into this kinda tray.
I think this tray is working well.
Oh, look, that's how I
know it's really flat.
So here's my plan: position
all of the jelly beans
in tight even rows, and now
I'm going to use a hot glue gun
to secure a backing to the jelly beans,
and then I'm gonna use the rack
and press them into the molds.
- [Cameraman] Oh my god.
- I can't believe you just did that.
Pipe lines of hot glue down these guides,
lay them over aligned with
the beans; they'll stick.
It worked.
Now I'm going to invert, and press them
onto the corn starch.
Not bad, not bad.
This mold thing worked out
better than I expected.
I got to use the hot glue gun.
Jelly Bellys is really looking up.
I mean, this is just, I haven't
even really started yet,
this is just setting myself up.
The hard part will be
the filling, the texture,
and the flavor, and the coating.
This part was the easy part.
Today is really gonna be
focused on that filling mixture,
not only create the flavors
inside the fillings,
but to try to achieve the
ideal texture for jelly beans,
which is kind of firm.
Thank you, oh, these are expensive.
This might be a good opportunity
to do a Gourmet Makes
where I'm not trying to work
a fruit flavor into the product.
For example, we have
cinnamon, coffee flavoring,
maple flavor, root beer extract,
oh, banana flavor, I don't
know how that's gonna be,
oh, and butter flavor.
So that one is for butter popcorn.
I just think root beer
should be root beer,
or it could be root beer
float and I could add vanilla.
Maple could be, like,
what's a maple syrup thing?
- French toast, yeah.
- Oh, that would be interesting.
- Like Belgian waffle.
- 'Cause I can basically just
like steep toast bread.
- Yeah.
- Okay, I like the idea of French toast.
Hi Delany.
- Hey Claire Saffitz.
- Is there any world in which
a banana flavor candy is good?
I feel like there's not.
- No, there's not.
- Okay, I kinda wanna eliminate banana.
What about cinnamon, what is like a,
I was thinking I don't want
it to be pumpkin spice,
but what's sort of a?
- Horchata.
- Oh, that's a good one, great idea.
Okay, that's five flavors, I
don't wanna be too ambitious.
I think that's good.
- Ambition never got anyone anywhere.
- Totally.
Even if this whole project fails,
at least I'll get points
for creative flavorings.
- Do it.
- Stop by later.
- I will.
- Okay, so the slurry, which
is the base of the filling,
is a mixture of corn starch,
sugar, water, and corn syrup.
The good news about the water
is that it gives us a
chance to flavor the water
by steeping it with something.
So, for example, the French toast flavor,
I'm gonna combine the maple extract
with water that I basically
dissolve toasted bread in.
Well I guess I wanna see
if steeping the water
actually introduces any
kind of flavor at all,
so I'm gonna start with the bread.
Do we have bread?
This is perfect, sandwich bread,
I'm gonna ask Gaby if I can use this.
- You might remember
this, I do this every year
to spread the holiday cheer.
- Uh-huh.
- Okay.
- Oh my god.
- You've seen it.
Press down.
- [Claire] Oh my god.
- So I think they have to
pass this test, am I putting
too much pressure?
- Oh my god.
No, that's okay.
It's so cute, I love it.
- [Gaby] Thank you.
- Can I use this bread?
So I'm gonna toast a
couple slices of bread.
This is done, nicely toasted,
we don't say burned around here.
This is about two cups
of water, a little less.
I'm just going to let it all soak,
it's like making bread tea.
While this steeps, I'm
gonna pop some popcorn.
I'm gonna do the same thing with that,
which, popcorn is a pretty strong flavor,
so I think it will infuse the water.
I'm gonna just do a light film
of oil, about a half a cup.
I hear popping.
[popcorn popping]
Okay. [laughs]
I'm gonna be leaving
that lid on for a sec.
So while this steeps, I'm gonna go back
and look at the bread water,
and strain that through a cheesecloth,
just to get the water and no solids.
The water that's coming
out is a little bit tan.
It certainly smells like
toast, it smells not good.
Gross.
Tastes like toast, truly.
I think with a little maple extract,
and obviously all the
sugar, and a little vanilla,
I think it could work.
Tastes like popcorn.
I just also thought I'm
gonna reduce the liquid,
to try to concentrate the flavor further.
While they're reducing, I can get together
my other ingredients for the filling.
I'm just starting from
a place of guessing.
From the video, I know it's corn starch,
sugar, water, and corn syrup.
Recipes I looked up
online also used gelatin.
So I'm just gonna start
with some basic proportions
and see where I get.
Three quarters of a cup sugar,
two tablespoons of corn starch,
a quarter ounce of gelatin,
a quarter cup of corn syrup,
the last thing is a half cup of water
and I'm using the reduced popcorn water.
This goes over to the stove.
So this will go up to 230,
I'm just gonna stir everything together
until the sugar is dissolved.
I'm in that delusionally hopeful headspace
where I think it might
work on the first try.
All right, I think we're good.
We're gonna come back over here,
and now I'm gonna add some
of that butter flavor.
I could really overdo it
with this butter flavor,
so I'm just gonna start with
an eighth of a teaspoon,
and this has to cool a bit, I think,
before I can transfer it into the molds.
I want this to get to a safe temperature
while it's still somewhat fluid
so I can pipe it into the molds,
and I wanna see if I can borrow,
they're really mine, I just
wanna say, Brad took them,
the syringe with the hollow
needles that I used for Gushers.
[bouncy music]
Oh.
Oh, god damn it.
It's just so set that it's
sticking to anything, really.
Corn starch the scissors.
Oh my god.
All right, at this point it's set,
like that's not forming
a jelly bean shape.
That one might be okay, that
one's certainly not right.
The first attempt is always
a learning experience,
but I think it fundamentally
kind of worked.
[laughs] Look at the texture of this.
Okay.
It tastes more like the butter
flavor than anything else,
but there is like a hint of
a grain in the background.
It's like kinda good, I wanna
say, or at least it's not bad,
so now I'm kind of excited.
The main question here
is have I cooked this
to the right temperature?
If I cook it hotter, there's less water,
the whole mixture will be firmer.
But I won't know if it's
the right temperature
until I dry them and do that process,
and also let them fully set.
So let me get these into a dehydrator,
and I just wanna see what happens to them.
Just make sure you like really take a look
at how good that one looks.
It's so bean-like.
- [Cameraman] It's on the record now.
- I've made one perfect jelly bean.
Okay, I do think I
should do one more test,
maybe with the bread water,
to see about cooking the mixture hotter,
and how that changes the texture.
I'm gonna do everything else the same
except for that temperature.
And now a half cup of
my toasted bread water.
I think I'm gonna take
it to soft-ball stage,
and then I can do a
side-by-side comparison.
I will do a quarter
teaspoon of vanilla paste,
and now I'm gonna do a scant
quarter teaspoon of the maple.
The color looks appealing,
and there's little flecks of vanilla,
so I think that this could be
a French toast-y flavor for sure.
All right, so I might wanna
start working with this now
before it really cools down.
This mixture is seemingly setting faster,
but that is because there's
less water in it overall.
It's also really not filling this plunger.
It's not working.
Great.
I'm going to plan B,
which is my two spoons.
Oh.
It's just setting up so much firmer
that it's not really extrudable.
All right, I'm gonna taste it.
I don't get a lot of
bread, I mostly get maple,
but that still makes it
taste like French toast.
The texture is somewhat jelly bean-like.
It's a little bit too elastic, I think.
Okay, whatever, all right,
let's put these into the dehydrator
and see how they firm up.
So I do feel like we're
on the right track,
and I'm pleased that the corn starch molds
seemed to sort of work.
I am hopeful, I feel good about it.
I'm just gonna poke at them.
[gasps] It's much
firmer, like much firmer.
But that corn starch coating really
does draw out a lot of moisture.
This is French toast, so
this is, I think, too hard.
Well, here, I guess I'll taste it.
Okay, so here's the thing.
It's a tiny bit crumbly,
but it's really firm.
Frankly, it doesn't
taste like bread at all,
it tastes like maple and vanilla.
Let me just taste this one.
The taste of this one is
impressive, the butter popcorn.
It really does taste like it.
This is a bit crumbly,
and this is a bit soft.
There's only a 10 degree
difference between these,
so I'm gonna split the
difference and go to 235.
Here's my one perfect jelly bean,
let's just look at the shape of this guy.
This is so good, I just need to make
a bunch of them like this.
Hi.
- What are you doing?
- Just like playing with spatulas.
We talked about how it is like Benihana.
You wanna try one?
- Yeah, let's Benihana this.
- Okay, ready?
- I don't know about your technique here.
- Yay, yes, you made me look good.
That moment of fun is gonna sustain me
through this whole day.
Oh, thanks Delany.
Come back later, let's play that later.
- Okay.
- Come back like every hour,
on the hour.
- On just every hour,
I'll come through, we'll yeah.
- Okay, cool.
I'm going to try to three rows of this.
Terrible.
All right, those were better.
And I'm just gonna keep
that off to the side
while I prepare my fillings.
I'm gonna toast this
brioche, pop some popcorn.
Brioche is a good choice for this
because brioche is very eggy and buttery.
I'm gonna pour water over it;
I'm basically gonna
boil this on the stove,
and I'll reduce it and
steep it at the same time.
Look what Andy's making, and
then look what I'm making.
His looks better.
Not only did that extract more flavor,
but I just have a thicker, more
concentrated liquid overall.
Ow, I always do that.
I have just over a cup here.
Very corny, and it
could use a little salt,
but I do think this is
a more concentrated liquid
than yesterday, so that's good.
Do we wanna infuse anything
else for these flavors?
I feel like we could
actually make rice milk
for the horchata flavor,
and do it that way,
basically the same thing.
I wanna make one horchata flavor
with the cinnamon extract,
and horchata is like a
cinnamon-y rice milk.
I'm gonna make some rice
milk out of this brown rice.
So I'm just blending it in some hot water.
We have a little bit of orange going in.
All right, there is my rice milk.
It's not like a puree, it's not so thick,
I think the consistency looks good,
so not quite as loose as
the popcorn water, but.
Oh, that's nice.
It has this super grainy taste,
not grainy texture, like taste of grain.
Now my bread infusion has reduced enough.
It definitely looks
thicker, you can see more,
you know, I think more of
the starch has dissolved.
Here's my bread water, strained.
Beautiful, this is sort of
like a study in beige here.
Great, my infusions are done,
I'm basically ready to start
building the sugar mixtures,
and I think, at least when
it comes to the infusions,
I have to go one flavor at a time.
I'll start with butter popcorn.
This time I am cooking the
mixture to 235 Fahrenheit,
but everything else I'm keeping the same.
The other half I'm saving
just in case I have to do this again.
Hopefully I won't need to use it.
The texture is so much thicker this time
because this has added starch,
it just occurs to me,
in the popcorn water.
So I wanna be careful to
not let it set too much
before I get it into the
molds, so I don't wanna wait.
I'm gonna go right ahead
and try with this syringe.
It is taking a little while,
it doesn't really want
to fill as quickly as I'm
lifting up the plunger,
that might be enough actually
to work with for now.
Oh, it's already too thick.
How the hell do I work with this?
I just corn starched my fingers,
but I think maybe if I?
Oh, I would say it's not working.
The first one worked, that was it.
What should I do?
- [Cameraman] Those look okay.
- No they don't.
They're not good.
No, no.
- No, no.
- You gotta go and come back.
I have one, I have one good one.
Here's my idea: because
I'm having such a hard time
getting this mixture
into molds this delicate,
we did have a backup system
which was we ordered a
bunch of that silicone putty
that we've used in the past to make molds,
so my new idea is to take
this semi-set filling
that is still malleable and moldable,
press this into a putty mold,
let it set for a little while,
pop it out, place it into
the corn starch mold,
and then let it dry.
Kidney bean?
I think it would be funny
if they actually looked like beans.
All right, maybe we use these.
[bouncy music]
I'm making a two-sided mold.
I'm gonna let this sit for 20 minutes.
In the meantime, I can
make little portions
of this first mixture.
Okay, 20 minutes later.
I'm going to take apart my molds.
Now the idea is place my little portions.
[bouncy music]
Oh, damn it, actually, I
mean, they kinda worked.
Once again, I have one
that I think looks great.
It literally looks like a bean,
but it certainly is easier
to work with the filling
at this stage than it is
when it's still really hot.
So now I wanna transfer
these to the corn starch.
[bouncy music]
It actually worked pretty well.
Now I'm popping the
beans out of their molds.
[bouncy music]
I'm only gonna make four flavors
because I made four things,
and I don't wanna do this
any longer than I have to.
So, revising my plan, we
have butter popcorn done,
French toast I'll do, pina colada I'll do,
and horchata I'll do.
I'll eliminate root beer
float, which is kinda sad.
I could probably get them
all going at the same time.
[laughs] That's a horrible idea.
I wanna juice a pineapple
for the pina colada flavor.
I'm just gonna blend it to
liquefy, and then strain it.
This pineapple has a lot of
foam on it from blending it,
so I'm gonna let this settle,
and get the other two
going in the meantime.
[bouncy music]
All right, all three of these
are gonna go onto the stove.
The horchata and French toast are gonna go
to 230 Fahrenheit, but I'll
take the pina colada to 235.
Is that right?
There's no way that this is right.
This doesn't make any sense to me.
The mixture still looks
super liquid and thin,
and yet it says that it came to 250.
Well this thermometer is
at least 10 degrees off.
How am I supposed to do this?
That's done.
[bouncy music]
I'm extremely worried about these.
The temperatures were all over the place.
- [Cameraman] How's the goo?
- The goo is not setting for
reasons I don't understand.
I'll blame the thermometers.
I don't know, I'm not sure what to do.
- Kevin, can you read this sign from here?
- It's my own fault.
All right, we called an audible.
These mixtures are not setting up
and it's too late to do
anything about it now.
So my idea is to put the fillings
just in the bowls in the dehydrator.
It should go all weekend,
we should come in on Monday,
check on everything, and hopefully
be able to pick up where we leave off.
I haven't done my best.
I just was really enjoying like
the corn starch molds and stuff.
I promise to try harder.
[laughs] Ready to start this
whole jelly bean thing again.
Thinking about it, the
whole two-part mold system
seems a little ill-advised.
Initial observation, these seem great,
and all of these seem super wrong.
What I'm wondering now is can I get
enough people to tell me that,
having made 12 butter popcorn
jelly beans, am I done?
I am going to try something
I've never really tried before,
which is to recook these mixtures,
one at a time this time,
to get it back to the temperature
where I know they will set firmer,
and then try to put them in the mold
and then into the corn starch.
I have the French toast mixture in here,
I'm adding a little bit of water,
I'm bringing it over to this stove,
and I'm gonna start cooking it.
This time, Thermapen,
no candy thermometer.
This goo [laughs] seems
very similar in texture
to the last time I cooked the same goo.
I'm hoping that it sets up
and then I'm able to roll it.
This is the horchata mixture.
Is this what the inside of a
jelly bean is like, you think?
It's just too sticky to be able to form.
- Oh, that's much too sticky.
- Alex.
Okay, so I'm thinking that
the mixture is workable.
So my idea is to portion
out one gram dollops.
The point at which it's not
longer sticky and I can roll it
is also the point at
which it holds its shape
and doesn't want to take
the shape of the mold.
I just sort of want them
to fill out this shape.
I think I wanna heat it
up in the dehydrator.
Maybe I'll put a bowl of water in there,
just to keep it a little bit moist.
This is the French toast filling.
I can form it, but it's also bouncy
and it won't take the shape of the mold.
I'm gonna try piping it.
Hi Brad.
- So Claire.
- Wait, I have a question.
What happens when you put
water in the dehydrator?
- Don't tell me you did that?
- Yeah.
- It dehydrates the watre.
- That's good.
- Also known as evaporation.
- That's good, that's what I wanted to do.
- Yeah, Claire, what are you doing?
Help me help you,
oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- Really, you wanna help?
- Well.
- No you don't,
that's okay.
- For a few minutes.
- I'm trying to pipe the mixture
to portion it out into bean-size.
- [Brad] You want me to hold it?
- Yeah, give it a little anchor.
What do we think a gram is?
- Oh, I'd have to see,
but I'm not quite sure.
- That's it.
- Right there.
Yeah, I wanna help.
- Yeah, go ahead.
- I'll cut the next one.
- Get in there.
- You go make a coffee.
- Do you want gloves?
- No, take a couple minutes.
- Yes, I'm gonna go take a break.
I'm gonna go check my emails.
- Dan says it's fine,
let me clean this up.
- I'll be over here.
- That one gram, oh, it
does stick to everything.
Oh, 0.9, good enough for this show.
- Good enough for this show? [laughing]
- 0.8; 0.7 we'll reject, 0.8's fine.
I'm good at repetitive stuff like that,
you know, once I get it going in a rhythm,
bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, like a machine.
Mr. Ford would have loved me,
didn't he invent the assembly line?
Claire!
- Hey, I'm on the phone.
- Oh.
- I'll be right there.
- Poor Claire, everyone's,
"Oh, poor Claire,"
she's over here suffering,
and, [exasperated sigh]
having a hard time
making candy and [bleep].
I got you more than 14.
- Those look great.
- Yeah.
- All one gram?
- Yeah, give or take, plus or minus 0.1.
- Such a good job, thank you.
This is truly one of the more
excruciating slow processes
that I've done on Gourmet Makes,
but I'm excited that I don't
think I have to start over,
even though this is taking
quite a bit of time.
Oh, well.
Here's my plan: I will let these sit here
until they come to room
temperature and firm up,
then I will take them out
of the mold, trim them,
put them in the corn starch.
These popcorn ones out,
oh, these are quite dry.
Replace them with the third flavor,
and just repeat that whole
process of dehydrating them
to get them to the molds.
- [Cameraman] How many more months
do you think you need to make jelly beans?
- I don't know, it's
gonna be a while, okay.
The horchata flavor is
taking the shape of the mold.
I'm going to set these aside,
so at least I can move onto the next step,
which is the coating.
If you take a look at
these guys from last week,
we have some beeswax that we
got, and some food coloring.
We also have very exciting
new pieces of equipment
that I've been waiting
this entire time to use,
our children's rock tumbler,
it's a kids' toy from National Geographic.
It's been years that I've been requesting
some kind of machine to function
as a drum for coating stuff.
[gasps] This is it, this
is how fast it moves?
It's so much less cool than
I thought it was gonna be.
It's not time for the rock tumbler
until after they're coated
and the coating is dried,
so now I wanna work on that part.
These are gonna be coated in white,
so I don't have to worry
about food coloring,
but basically all I'm doing
is melting the beeswax,
whisking in some powdered
sugar, and coating these.
I did remember that it
said something about
the flavoring being in the
coating and in the filling,
which I guess I could add a
little bit of the popcorn water.
It is not at all mixing.
What I've learned from this
is you can't put something
that's water in wax,
'cause it doesn't work.
So that's not working, so now
I have to make popcorn again.
I'm making popcorn so I
can grind it to a powder,
and then add it to the wax
along with the powdered sugar.
Do you know what I think we need?
I think we need the Mentos rack.
Let's see if the beans
will actually fit on these.
So this is the rack that
I used to dry the Mentos.
As requested, it went into
the Gourmet Makes museum,
and it's on loan.
Now I'm just going to whisk
in this powdered sugar.
Now I'm gonna add my popcorn powder.
I'm also gonna add a lot of salt.
While this is still on the
stove, I'm gonna dip them.
I need to grab a [sighs] paperclip.
I don't know about this.
It's not a very thick coating.
It's not a good time.
- DEFCON three.
- Yeah, I got super impatient
and I just dumped them all in,
and now they're on the rack.
As you can tell, it's going great.
- Yeah, what is going well?
- Nothing.
This whole episode
is a disaster.
- I refuse to accept that.
I refuse to accept that.
Your jelly kinda goo is
like super super fun.
- Chris, the flavor is tolerable at best.
The texture is fine.
- Oh, we're finals?
- The shape is--
- Donezo's?
- What?
- Are you done?
- No, I can't believe that
you can't sense right now
that I'm not in a good place.
- Oh, no. [laughter]
- I don't know why I thought beeswax
would make an acceptable coating,
because it's not food and
it doesn't taste good.
I'm glad that I learned that.
Probably coulda learned that
before I coated all of one flavor in it,
but I think that these are not a loss,
I think I can still work with these.
So in the morning, come in,
take the other ones out of the dehydrator,
try to keep them separate
because they all look identical,
and really focus on the coating.
The best thing I can say about tomorrow
is I think it'll be over no matter what
by the end of the day.
- Hey Claire.
- I wanna tell you about yesterday.
Somehow I just managed to do
nothing for an entire day,
and have nothing, like,
the few things I did try didn't work.
- [Rhoda] I think the shape is great.
- [Claire] I know, the
shape is good, actually.
- [Rhoda] Yeah.
- I'm surprised.
- I think you have a
lot to be proud of here.
- Thanks Rhoda.
- Good luck.
- Rhoda saying that I
have a lot to be proud of
is really making me feel better.
This is the butter popcorn from yesterday.
They don't look bad, but
they still have a lot
of the beeswax on them, and I
wanna buff a lot of that off.
I just feel like maybe
there's a better abrasive
than other jelly beans.
I feel like if I put real jelly beans
in with my jelly beans,
some of the wax coating
on the real jelly beans would
rub off onto my jelly beans.
Is that cheating?
Maybe I'll put real beans in here.
I'm putting a lot in.
Oh my god.
I think that what they did was pick up
the coating of the actual beans.
I gotta put something in there
that's gonna be more abrasive.
So maybe like couscous or something?
Yolele Fonio?
Anyone know what this is?
Here's what I'm gonna do.
My plan is to melt cocoa
butter, get it liquid.
With the butter popcorn,
adding the pulverized popcorn
to the coating didn't really
work 'cause it's too gritty,
it doesn't get very fine.
Maybe I can infuse some popcorn
into the melting cocoa butter?
The kind of food coloring we have here,
it's gel food coloring
which is water-based,
so I can't add it to cocoa butter,
so instead I'm gonna add
it to the powdered sugar
to make a colored sugar to
add as part of the coating.
Here's my ivory powdered sugar.
This is adding the gold color,
this is for French toast.
I don't need to do anything,
I just wanna make it white.
Moving onto the next step,
put in just the butter popcorn flavor
and start coating with my hopefully
popcorn-infused jelly beans.
I don't know, is this gonna work?
I think this setup is working pretty well,
the beans are in there.
There's a problem.
They're not heavy enough to be tumbling,
they're just, they need
something else in there,
they need some ball bearings.
These are Brad's stainless
steel ball bearings,
we talk about them
literally every episode.
I'm gonna throw a couple in
there and see what happens.
Oh yeah, that's helping, right?
All right, ready, I'm adding some of this.
What I need to do now is more layers,
more cocoa butter, more sugar.
I think I maybe just
have to do more layers.
Sorry, sorry, that wasn't about you.
- Those look good, good shape.
- But they're so bumpy.
- Well, but they're gonna
have like a coating.
- That is the coating.
- Oh, this is the coating.
- Yeah.
- Wait, why doesn't it have
like a little hard candy shell?
- Rick.
- Oh god, okay, sorry.
- Well, I did what I did during M&M's,
which is I made rocks.
- Aww, I didn't know you whittled.
- I love it, it's preferable
to anything I've done so far.
Do you think it's okay if,
at the end of five days,
I've only made one kind of jelly bean?
But it is butter popcorn.
- Uh-huh, I think you need to say, like,
"What if I were to tell you that I made
"nine hand-whittled artisanal jelly beans
"in the most incredible
flavor ever known to man?"
Then people would be
like, "That's incredible."
- I feel like the butter
popcorn flavor is good at best.
- Okay. [laughs]
- Maybe not amazing.
- You can't say that.
- So as I continue to carve these,
I'm going to be coating the French toast,
just trying to get a more
even layer this time.
I'm not sure they look great,
but we don't have time.
Put the last flavor, which
is horchata, in here.
All right, here's my game plan.
The butter popcorn, I think, are the ones
that look the best so far.
I'm going to airbrush them
to look like butter popcorn.
All right, where's the, ah, okay.
This is our compressor.
We've used this for
Skittles, M&M's, Sno Balls,
for Gourmet Makes bingo,
so there's another one.
Oh my god, you guys,
there's a metallic gold.
How did we never know this?
It's unopened.
All right, now I'm having fun again.
Horchata will be harvest brown,
French toast will be metallic gold,
butter popcorn will be canary yellow.
What can I say, it's an imperfect world
with imperfect decisions.
The colors are gonna look so bad.
This is metallic gold French toast.
So now, for horchata, I'm
going to do harvest brown.
This is sort of an avant-garde
modernist take on horchata.
We're entering the final
phase of this plan.
We're just coating the beans in beeswax,
and I just wanna do a very,
very, very light layer
because it dries kinda whitish.
That was not a good idea.
I've truly never wanted to throw something
in the garbage more than I wanna,
look, some of it broke off,
some of the coating broke off.
Yeah, we're done, and it was a failure.
It was an unmitigated failure.
After five days of going
absolutely nowhere,
I made something that doesn't look good,
probably doesn't taste good,
and is definitely worse than the original.
- Is there another day, what's the sitch?
- Nope, I'm not coming back.
[laughter] This is it.
Although I did five minutes
ago try to pitch an idea
where I was gonna come in
and start over tomorrow.
I think we should do that.
Let me, give me a chance to save myself,
and to salvage this.
- No, do it, do it, let her.
- [Cameraman] You wanna do it again?
- Yeah, yeah.
- She has it in her.
Look at her, look.
This can not be where this ends.
- She's not failing,
she's not going to fail.
- This can't be it.
Will you help me?
- Yes.
What do you need?
- How do I do it?
- Work tomorrow.
- Can I please?
When I got home last night and I explained
to my boyfriend what
happened, his response was,
"Claire, in six days, God made
the heavens and the earth,
"I think you can make a jelly bean."
I think it helped, I don't know.
Also, I'm obviously gonna need
a lot of coffee for this episode,
but I'm usually told I
can't have a coffee out,
so I put it in the jelly beans,
and now it's acceptable.
I think today I have to
leverage the silicone molds.
I had the idea to sort of make
a hybrid silicone corn starch mold.
I don't know why I didn't
do this in the beginning,
it makes a lot more sense to me.
And I think I have to basically cook
a hotter mixture with more gelatin,
because I don't have time
to let these dry overnight.
I don't wanna add those starchy
liquids for the flavors,
because I think that those
were affecting the set.
I need to eliminate that as a variable
so that I can be more
precise about temperature,
and I'm gonna need help from everyone.
Okay, fly in the molds.
Let's get them over here.
So instead of pressing the
bean into the mold mixture,
I wanna press the mold
mixture onto the bean.
All right, I need an extra set of hands.
Overall, it looks, I think, pretty good.
I'm gonna wait for this mold to cure,
and while I'm waiting, I'm gonna test
a batch of sugar mixture.
This is great, we're
gonna do it, you guys.
I've tweaked the quantities
of some of the ingredients.
The sugar and corn syrup are the same,
I'm increasing the corn
starch and the gelatin.
This mixture as is is already so viscous
that I would have a hard time
pouring it into the molds,
so I'm gonna basically make like a cornet,
like a little parchment,
'cause parchment is heatproof.
There we go.
I'm happy that this method
seems really workable.
What I have to wait and see now is
if I'll also be able to pop them
out of the mold once it's set.
- [Cameraman] Spoiler alert.
- Rude.
I might need to make another mold.
You guys, Rick just
asked me how did it go?
- 'Cause we know you're done.
- It's 11, oh my god,
I was like, it's 11:30.
You're gonna help me, right?
Because this isn't gonna
happen with me alone.
- Yeah, come on, we're
gonna do it, it's fine.
- We're gonna do it?
Okay, good.
Okay, here's the problem
that I'm currently facing.
Before, I was making like
flavored water things,
but I think that the water doing that
is introducing like indeterminate amounts
of starch to the mixture,
and it's like throwing off
the results a little bit,
so I don't wanna do that.
These are our options.
So coconut, some cinnamon.
- Banana.
- Yeah, I can't do banana.
- It's weird, yeah.
- I was thinking of doing
root beer and vanilla,
and it be like root beer float.
- Oh, yeah, oh, I like that.
- So maybe we'll bring that one back in.
- Okay.
Oh, do you have cinnamon?
- We have cinnamon, yeah.
- Cinnamon apple?
- Cinnamon apple, that's a good idea.
Let's shoot for three, I
think three is reasonable.
- [Rick] Okay.
- Chocolate peppermint
is like holiday bark.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- Could be fun, chocolate peppermint.
It's actually time to check
on the first batch I did in the freezer.
- [Rick] These look really good.
- Thanks.
- They're close.
- It is kinda close, right?
- Yeah.
I do think I'll cook
it a little bit hotter,
just to have the mixture firmer.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Rick, I need you within a
20 foot radius at all times.
- Okay.
- I wanna make a version of
this mold that's just better.
Flatten the mixture into a loaf pan
just to keep the sides from oozing.
I feel like that looks really good.
- [Rick] That does.
- My mixture is coming up.
I'm putting the extracts
already into this bowl.
These are chocolate and peppermint,
an eighth of a teaspoon each.
I'm at 220.
Okay, why is it burning?
No seriously, why are
there solid bits in here?
But it's only on 220,
it's barely above boiling,
so like what is happening?
- This looks like something
else is browning in there.
I think you should just--
- Start over?
- Yeah.
It's fine, it's fine,
let's throw this away,
that's what it needs,
I'll get you a new pan.
- We don't have time for this.
- Hi, I'm Rick, and today we're
making gourmet jelly beans,
as Claire grimaces back in the back.
It's gonna be amazing, Claire.
Just throw that away, please.
- Yeah, you think, yeah?
- Yeah, throw it away.
- Okay.
- [Brad] What are we doing?
- We're making jelly beans.
- Oh, oh, oh.
- We've started over.
- Oh no.
- What's happening, oh, oh, whoa?
- You want me to go away?
- Is he bothering you, Claire?
- Both of you, I need some space.
- All right, Claire, focus, I'll be back.
- All right, thanks.
Okay, 240, all right.
This is finally looking right.
It appears to be going
better than in the past.
So I just want the mixture to settle.
I wanna let that set
until I can pop them out,
but I think it went really well,
and I have a good feeling about it,
and that was the fastest,
easiest time I've had yet
getting them into the molds.
Yeah, we do seem to be making progress.
Thanks Rick.
- Yeah, wait, what happened?
- Thank you.
- No, it was great.
- Yay, and you're smiling?
- I'm smiling.
Do you think I have to
do more than one flavor
after we decided we would do four?
- No.
- Maybe like two.
- Okay.
- This is never making it into the video.
So not all of these came out of the molds.
A couple of these got a little stuck,
but overall, I think this
mixture seems really good.
So here's a piece of that last filling.
It seems kinda stretchy.
[laughs] You know how I always said
I wished jelly beans had like less flavor
and were a lot softer?
Well, fortunately I've made that version.
But, in six days, this is
still the closest I've come
to anything resembling a jelly bean,
so I'm gonna go with it.
I'm going to focus on
coating this version.
- [Cameraman] How are you gonna coat that?
- I don't know yet.
- I was just eating a
bunch of jelly beans,
and there was something
that was crunching,
and if you just sort of
rub them in your fingers,
you get like little granules of sugar.
- So that makes me think maybe
it's a three part coating.
It's first something sticky,
then it's just tossed in sugar,
then it's coated in something waxy,
and instead of actual
wax, which was gross,
I can just try to cocoa butter.
- Yeah.
- So maybe like a corn syrup
with a little bit of food coloring in it?
- Mm-hmm.
- Will you make more of the filling?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Okay, thanks.
'Cause I don't wanna do it anymore.
- Okay.
- Apply a thin layer of
corn syrup to the beans
and then tossing in sugar.
- I like that color.
- Thank you.
- Come back like every hour,
on the hour.
- On just every hour,
I'll come through, we'll, yeah.
- Okay, cool.
Can I help you?
- I guess not.
- Not a good time.
All right.
- I'm just doing what I'm
told, but with a smile.
- So I'm putting in a half teaspoon
of the root beer extract,
'cause I really want it
to be root beer-flavored.
- It does smell very vanilla-y.
- It feels good, it
feels like the last one.
I think it's time to put
these in the freezer.
While the root beer flavor is chilling,
I have my peppermint flavor.
I dusted them with a little
bit of corn starch also.
So far they look good.
- They look really good.
- I just am not sure
what to do at this stage.
I just wish there to like spray them, or.
- Do we have any of the
little tiny sprayers?
- No, no, we have an atomizer.
- Let's get it, and then just--
- Is this gonna clog it really bad?
- We can get a bain-marie.
- And keep it in there?
- Yeah.
- All right, so I'm melting
the cocoa butter on the stove.
- Do we have funnels,
or do you wanna make a cornet?
- I can make one, yeah.
We're heating this so
that the oil doesn't seize
once it hits the glass.
I'm really struggling with this.
I'm ready.
- [Rick] Can you please
just move your hands?
- No, I can't.
[high-pitched squealing]
- Okay, don't make that
sound, and ow, that's hot.
- It's pouring all over the counter.
- Is it?
- Ow. [laughter]
Wait, Rick, I have an idea.
- What?
- What if we get the rock tumbler out,
and we spritz them in the tumbler?
- Oh, that's a great idea.
- So now I'm just gonna spritz
them as they're tumbling.
Honestly, they don't look that bad.
Besides having a mottled texture,
they're really smooth, so I wonder
if I put them back in the tumbler
with a little bit of granulated sugar,
if that would polish them.
I really actually just wanna finish.
I don't wanna do this anymore.
I mean, it does feel like they
have a coating, which is good.
My question is, should we airbrush them?
- Why don't we make it easy,
and we'll just get red luster dust?
- Oh, luster dust.
We are going to mist the jelly beans
with a tiny bit of oil, and then put them
into the tumbler with the luster dust.
Oh my god, they look so good.
- [gasps] Oh my god,
they're beautiful, Claire.
- They look so pretty.
- Wow.
- I can't believe that they
actually turned out, ready?
- Oh my god, they look amazing.
[gasps] Claire, they're
like Christmas jelly beans.
- They also look like real beans,
which I think is funny.
That luster dust, man.
- I know, I mean,
but even like, what would you rather eat?
- Boring.
- I know, seriously, whatever.
Ours do look better than theirs.
- What even flavor is this?
- Who knows?
Lime, or sour apple?
- Did I just say a sentence?
- [Cameraman] There's
three flavors like that.
- These are chocolate peppermint,
and I think they look beautiful.
All right, are we gonna taste?
- Yeah.
- Okay, ready?
- More chocolate than mint.
- I was gonna say, get the chocolate.
- Did we add mint?
- Oh yeah, there it is.
There's the mint.
- Oh, at the end.
That's crazy.
I actually think those are
gonna be really good overnight.
- If you weren't here, Rick, I'm afraid
to even think about what
would have happened.
- I could not let you go down like that.
- Thank you.
- There was no way.
- Yeah, this is a real friend,
and you made it better,
and then you brought in the luster dust,
and that really saved the day.
I can say a couple
positive things, though,
about this experience.
One, the utility of corn
starch and drying gummy things,
I got better at using the silicone molds.
So it's like there was
a sense of progress,
even if it didn't all quite come together
the way that I hoped,
but mostly the takeaway
was that surround yourself
with people like Rick
who are gonna lift you up
when you wanna murder someone.
I'm just grateful for Rick,
and I never wanna see jelly beans again,
as long as I live,
and I never liked them to begin with.
- And here's how you
make gourmet jelly beans.
- Press dry kidney beans into a slab
of freshly mixed food-safe silicone putty.
Let the mold cure, pop out the beans,
and spray the mold with
non-stick cooking oil spray,
and set aside.
Make a small piping bag from
parchment paper, and set aside.
Combine three quarter cup sugar,
three tablespoons corn starch,
10 grams unflavored gelatin,
quarter cup corn syrup,
and half a cup water
in a small saucepan.
Stir the mixture over medium heat
until the sugar is dissolved,
then stop stirring when the
mixture comes to a boil.
Using a digital candy
thermometer, cook the mixture,
washing down the sides of the
pot with a wet pastry brush
until it registers 240 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pour the mixture into
a medium heatproof bowl
without scraping the bottom or sides,
and whisk in a quarter
teaspoon chocolate extract
and a quarter teaspoon peppermint extract.
Pour the mixture into the parchment bag,
and pipe into the greased molds.
Freeze the molds about 15 minutes
until the mixture is solidified.
Pop out the candies and
paint them in corn syrup
mixed with green food
coloring, then toss in sugar.
Sift a mixture of corn starch and sugar
over the beans again, then
place melted cocoa butter
in an atomizer and spray
the beans all over.
Refrigerate the beans until set,
and then put them in a
tumbler along with more sugar
and tumble for five minutes.
Spray the beans with more cocoa butter,
and repeat the tumbling process.
Coat in luster dust, sift, and serve.
- I mean, we already know Claire named it,
but this will be the
best part ever.
- Thanks, Gaby.
- One, two, three.
Yes!
- Yay.
- And it's clean, she's
been eating so much kale.
