Video: How To Make Gummy LEGO Candies - YouTube

YouTube is chock-full of amazing instructional culinary videos, but some of the recipes are easier filmed than done. So I'm volunteering to find out if YouTube can turn an Internet-addicted idiot like me into a cooking master, starting with "How to Make LEGO Gummy Candy!" 

This video by Grant Thompson (also known as "The King of Random") about how to make your own LEGO gummy candy certainly caught the Internet's attention; it's racked up nearly 4 million views in under a month. In it, Thompson makes gummy versions of LEGO men and even a stackable set of LEGO bricks—what could be more awesome than that?

Though I was skeptical of how simple it would be to make any sort of gummy candy in my kitchen, the three ingredients required were remarkably easy to find: I was able to grab the exact three shown in the video—Karo Light Corn Syrup, Knox Unflavored Gelatine and Jell-O—at Target, practically all on one aisle. I did, however, use grape Jell-O instead of the berry blue flavor, because fight the power!

Slightly harder to find was a LEGO ice cube mold, which I had to grab from a LEGO store. But sure enough, a mold for making little authentically sized LEGO men was right by the entrance. Everything is awesome!

Back home, watching the video again made me a little nervous: The instructions are very specific—almost like he's expecting me to screw it up. But things went smoothly. My corn syrup easily dissolved into my cold water. It took slightly longer than expected (about 10 minutes), but my gelatin dissolved completely as well. At the stove, heating the mixture was a piece of cake—it was ready to go after about eight minutes.

Thompson's biggest warning was to watch out for stuff floating in your liquid. Since I didn't want my little LEGO children to turn out deformed, I took this advice to heart and followed his method for scraping off the imperfections. Sure enough, after 10 minutes, all the garbage had floated to the top, and removing it was relatively straightforward. Yes, a little bit of white gelatin was left behind and ended up in a few of my Jell-O men, but, hey, as a parent, you love them all the same, right?

With the imperfections gone, I poured my mixture into the LEGO-man mold, and just like that, I was done. Really? The whole process, which I took at the slowest possible pace, took about 30 minutes. All that was left was to wait five hours to let the gummies set and see how badly I screwed up. So I shoved my mold into the refrigerator and went to sleep.

Like a kid on Christmas morning, I was excited to see what my LEGO men looked like when I woke up. Sure enough, they popped out of the tray without incident and—voila—I had perfect little gummy LEGO men!

The final product was a little bit sticky, but not problematically so, and definitely didn't leave a mess like regular Jell-O would. And though the consistency certainly feels lighter than commercially produced gummy candies, the little men held together firmly (even after sitting out for hours) and stood up straight on their feet, just like The King of Random said they would. (Though gravity did take hold after a while, causing them to face-plant into the table. Sorry, dudes!)

After a while, gravity will cause the LEGO gummies to face-plant.

The texture was also lighter than a normal gummy, but the flavor was pleasant, resembling a slightly chewier Jell-O square. I had to restrain myself from gobbling up all eight of my LEGO buddies right away and creating a major LEGO-man massacre.

Overall, I was impressed. Making these LEGO gummies was almost ridiculously easy, and though their resemblance to actual "candy" is a bit overstated, they are as durable and detailed as promised.

But what about the promise of an amazing collection of stackable LEGO gummy bricks to build amazing gummy towers for my gummy LEGO men to live in? Well, for that, all you need are different molds.

If I can do it, you can do it. Just beware of getting emotionally attached to your handcrafted LEGO men before you eat them.