Pastry Chef Attempts to Make Gourmet Jelly Belly Jelly Beans

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.