Zucchini Gummy Candy - A Fun and Easy Zucchini Recipe (2024)

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!

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.

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.

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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.

Originally published in 2012, updated in 2014, 2018.