Grape Gumdrop Bats with Homemade Candy Eyes for Halloween

Your Halloween party guests will go batty when you serve them these Grape Gumdrop Bats decorated with black sugar and homemade candy eyes.

Have you made homemade gumdrops?

Over the years I’ve made some really fun homemade gumdrops using pectin as the thickening agent. Although I love how they taste, I’ve had several readers say that they had difficulty getting them to set up just right. You need a good candy thermometer in order to make my original gumdrop recipe.

When Dixie Crystals asked me to make some fun little Gumdrop Bats for Halloween I decided to use an easier method of making the gumdrops. Instead of pectin, I used gelatin instead.

I mixed a bit of grape gelatin with some unflavored gelatin to get a wonderful grape flavor and a firm gummy texture to the bats. To turn the gummy bats into gumdrop bats I coated them in black sugar.

I could have added store-bought candy eyes that are white with black pupils but I wanted my bats to have glowing yellow eyes, so I made my own. The process is pretty simple and one recipe makes a lot of candy eyes.