Zucchini Gummy Candy – A Fun and Easy Zucchini Recipe
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Need a new easy zucchini recipe? Make some zucchini gummy candy! This zucchini gummy candy recipe is made without jello or pectin tastes like commercial gummy treats with no artificial flavors, colors or refined sugar.
I saw a recipe online that made them with drink mix and sugar, and coated them with more drink mix – more sugar and artificial color and flavor than I prefer. So I decided to experiment with a simpler version using fruit juice concentrate. It worked out great!
For those who are not familiar with fruit juice concentrate, it’s concentrated juice that gets mixed with water for drinking. I usually buy it in the frozen foods section, but sometimes you can find it in the juice section.
Naturally Sweetened Zucchini Gummy Candy Recipe
Ingredients
- 8 cups summer squash or zucchini, peeled, seeded and cut into roughly 1/2 inch cubes
- 1 can fruit juice concentrate (11.5 ounce)
- 1 can water
Directions
Prepare zucchini. This is a good use for overgrown garden zucchini – just cut around the seed cavity.
Place cubed zucchini in a large, nonreactive stockpot. (I use an 8 quart stainless steel stockpot.) Pour in juice concentrate and water.
Cook gently until translucent and tender, about 30 minutes. Drain in a colander, spread out on dehydrator sheets so the pieces are not touching. In the photo below I have three flavors (top to bottom): cranberry-raspberry juice concentrate, blueberry juice, and strawberry-kiwi juice concentrate.
Dehydrate at 135° F for 8-12 hours or until tacky but no longer moist. I usually do mine overnight. As you can see, they shrink dramatically. The dehydrator shown in the photos is my nine tray Excalibur, which I invested in a couple of years ago to keep up with the garden bounty. I also have an older Snackmaster dehydrator, which is a great beginner dehydrator for around $50.
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The original recipe I saw called for rolling these in powdered lemonade mix to do a sweet/sour gummy, but the juice provides plenty of sweetness for me. I’d suggest storing these in the fridge and eating them within a month, or freezing for longer storage. With the sugar content and water content, it’s tough to get them dry enough to ensure long shelf life without cooler temps.
And there you have it – summer squash gummy candy made with no artificial flavors or colors and unsweetened fruit juice.
How Many Gummy Candies can you make with one Zucchini?
One large zucchini will probably yield 8 cups with careful cutting. To get some different colors for the photos, I tried two different types of juice concentrate and plain blueberry juice (without added water).
You may notice that the blueberry gummies are less shiny than the other two. They were also less sweet. The texture and taste is amazingly similar to a commercial gummy candy. I used the leftover juice concentrate to flavor kombucha.
PrintZucchini Gummy Candy – A Fun and Easy Zucchini Recipe
This zucchini gummy candy recipe without jello or pectin tastes like commercial gummy treats with no artificial flavors, colors or refined sugar.
- Yield: 2 cups 1x
- Category: Snacks
- Method: Stove top Cooking/Dehydrating
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 8 cups zucchini or summer squash, peeled, seeded and cut into roughly 1/2 inch cubes
- 1 can fruit juice concentrate (11.5 ounce)
- 1 can water
Instructions
- Place cubed zucchini in a large, nonreactive stockpot. Pour in juice concentrate and water.
- Cook gently until translucent and tender, about 30 minutes.
- Drain in a colander, spread out on dehydrator sheets so the pieces are not touching.
- Dehydrate at 135F for 8-12 hours or until tacky but no longer moist. I usually do mine overnight.
- Enjoy right away or pack for snacking. For longer storage, place in a sealed container in the refrigerator and eat within one month. Makes around 2 cups.
Notes
This is a good use for overgrown garden zucchini – just cut around the seed cavity.
Please take a moment to “Like” or Pin the post if you’ve enjoyed it, and leave a comment below with your favorite ways to use up a bounty of zucchini or summer squash.
More Zucchini Recipes
You may also enjoy:
- Zapple Pie – Mock “Apple Pie” Made with Zucchini
- The Best Way to Use Up Extra Zucchini
- Cheesy Garlic Zucchini Bread – Great with Fresh or Frozen Zucchini
- Mom’s Best Zucchini Bread Recipe – A Homestyle Country Classic
- Homemade Zucchini Relish Sweetened with Honey
If You You Don’t Have a Dehydrator
Check out “Home Food Drying – 6 Things You Need to Know to Dehydrate Food at Home” for an assortment of DIY dehydrator options. If you can get your oven cool enough (around 135° F), you could try trying these on cookie sheets, stirring every hour or so until dry.
This article is written by Laurie Neverman. Laurie grew up in the kitchen, learning baking and home cooking from her momma. At age 15, she and her mom and two sisters created Irene’s Custom Cakes & Catering, which was her summer job through most of high school and college.
Originally published in 2012, last updated in 2024.
Can you make this with yellow summer squash?
Sure.
I don’t have a dehydrator, can I bake it?
The texture will be a little different with oven drying, but if you want to try it, set the oven as low as possible and spread the prepared zucchini on a sheet pan. Prop the oven open a bit for air circulation if possible. Put the zucchini in and stir and check dryness every 15 – 20 minutes.
Please tell me what and where you get the fruit concentrate. I even looked for 11.5 ounce canned fruit concentrate, and so far, have not found anything I would consider putting in my mouth!
The juice concentrate typically available either frozen or in the canned juice section. The product I use is normally sold frozen in a can about the size of a soda can. You thaw it and mix it with several cans of water to make juice for drinking. There are many different flavors available, but I usually opt for one that’s a concentrated juice or juice blend with no added sugar.
Thank you for asking. I will snap a photo next time I’m in the grocery store to help clarify.
I stumbled on your gummy recipe from a blog post by The Purposeful Pantry — I plan on making her zucchini jerky! I’m so excited to try making these gummies however I’m very new to dehydrating and was wondering… can I make the jerky and the gummies in the dehydrator at the same time? Or will the flavours of each infuse into the other?
Maybe. Depending on how strong the jerky flavor is, some of it may infuse into the gummies. I generally avoid mixing savory and sweet, because they sit in the same space for a long time.
Where do you get the sodium content in your nutrition information? Zucchini have 16 mg per medium sized. Most fruits have little to none. Even powdered drink mix is only 15 mg per serving. There is no way 1/4 c of the gummy zucchini has over 800 mg. Brings all of your nutrition information into question.
Ack! Sorry about that. The stupid nutrition calculator “helpfully” substituted canned Italian styles zucchini for plain raw zucchini, and I didn’t catch the substitution. The browser I use by default (Chrome) stopped displaying the nutrition information recently, making it harder to catch mistakes.
I went back into the calculator and put in raw zucchini instead, so the numbers should be more accurate now.
If you are on a strict diet, I’d advise rechecking any recipe you find online. The calculators sometimes substitute the wrong ingredients, and there can be big differences between brands if packaged products are used as part of a recipe.
I just made these and they’re amazing! Such a surprising texture and flavor. (I used lemonade and blueberry pomegranate juice.)
I’m glad that they worked out well for you. Thanks for taking time to share your experience and the flavors that you made.