These homemade sour gummies are bursting with strawberry flavor from real fruit, coated with citric acid and sugar for a spectacularly sour finish.

Making your own gummy candies is not for the feint of heart, but the results are well worth the effort. These pectin-based gummies are sweet and sour with a delightful jelly-like texture that you’ll adore.

Before we start, let me just say: these aren’t those kinds of gummies. Don’t get me wrong, they are plenty fun, but just not that kind of fun, if you know what I mean. I have no experience with such confections (we live in the wrong state for that), and thus I cannot advise as to how you might convert this recipe into that kind of recipe, so please don’t ask. Sorry!

Now that that is cleared up, let me tell you a bit about these delightful (and family friendly!) sour strawberry gummy candies.

There is a lot of info in this post, including plenty of sugar science, that I encourage you to read through before attempting this recipe.

Made using real fruit (versus fruit extract or flavoring concentrates like many gummy recipe), these homemade gummies taste like a perfectly ripe spring strawberry, only more intense. Both the sugar and the citric acid serve to amp up the strawberry flavor even more.

The gummy itself is not overly sour; rather, the tart kick comes from a coating of sugar mixed with citric acid. You can certainly opt to use just sugar if you wanted a sweeter gummy (though don’t leave out the citric acid in the candy base itself as that is necessary for a proper set). You can also increase the citric acid in the coating for a truly mouth-puckering result.

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