How can I create this coconut milk, fruit, and veggie snack at home?

Question

My baby and I both enjoy Happy Creamies. I don't enjoy the price, however, and I do enjoy making food for my family. I'm trying to figure out what the basics of a similar homemade item would be.

The snacks are about U. S. quarter sized around and shaped like large chocolate chips. I imagine that's easy enough to re-create using a pastry bag or even a plastic bag. The texture of the snack is similar to a vanilla wafer, only it melts a little easier in the mouth (similar to a Puff, only without the distinct rice puff texture).

The ingredient lists for the three different types of Happy Creamies are as follows

organic sweet potato, organic apple puree concentrate, organic sweet pea, organic white grape juice concentrate, organic coconut milk, organic guar gum, organic tapioca starch, organic spinach, natural flavor, xanthan gum, malic acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), B. coagulans, pre and probiotics, organic kiwi, organic cinnamon

(apple, spinach, pea, and kiwi))

organic sweet potato, organic mango, organic carrot juice concentrate, organic guar gum, organic orange juice concentrate, organic white grape juice concentrate, organic tapioca starch, natural flavor, xanthan gum, citric acid, B. coagulans, organic coconut milk, pre and probiotics

(carrot, mango, and orange)

organic butternut squash, organic apple, organic strawberry, organic coconut milk, organic guar gum, organic carrot juice concentrate, organic white grape juice concentrate, organic raspberry, organic tapioca starch, natural flavor, citric acid, xanthan gum, B. coagulans, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), pre and probiotics

(strawberry, raspberry, and carrot)

It looks like the essential elements are some sort of starchy puree (butternut squash or sweet potato), coconut milk, guar gum, and tapioca starch. Am I right? How can I go from this information to a recipe, or at least a start on a recipe?

Answer 1

Ok I'm going to give this a shot by helping you understand why the ingredients are in there. At it's core this seems to be a very aerated meringue with stabilizers to help avoid using dairy products and eggs.

organic sweet potato, organic apple puree concentrate, organic sweet pea, organic white grape juice concentrate

These ingredients are your base flavors, they seem to be a pretty simple mix of naturally sweet ingredients to bring the sugar content up.

organic coconut milk, organic guar gum, organic tapioca starch, xanthan gum

These ingredients are going to likely be added together first to hydrate the gum and the tapioca starch is going to act as a bulking agent to make it have more volume without being dense. The guar gum and xanthan gum are going to give a more consistent mouthfeel and flavor release and add some stability to the meringue. These two hydrocolloids together have a synergistic effect and will strengthen the overall product, allowing it to take on more air without collapsing.

organic spinach, natural flavor, malic acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), B. coagulans, pre and probiotics, organic kiwi, organic cinnamon

These final ingredients appear to be flavor enhancing or balancing. Malic acid is very tart as is kiwi, the cinnamon likely helps to balance this. Ascorbic is likely in there as an antioxidant to prevent discoloration and the rest look to be the pro-biotics that are touted in the packaging but really probably play very little part in the making of the food.

I believe the process of making this will be very similar to this recipe here http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2007/04/whipped_yogurt_.html

Answer 2

The Guar gum and Xanthan gum are the ingredients that allow these candies to retain their shape, but then melt in your mouth. The tapioca starch less so. Basically, unless you are willing to work with these ingredients you won't be able to reproduce the texture. You can get both of these mail order, and I'm sure with some trial and error you could get it work work. Once you get the consistency you are looking for you could pipe it out into the drop shapes as you say.