I Tried to Turn Grapes into “Healthy Sour Patch Kids” and This Is What Happened

Sometimes a TikTok video veers just a little too close to an infomercial. One recently — about turning grapes into Sour Patch Kids — practically shouted at me that I can “throw away my Sour Patch Kids, because this trick is even better.” Normally I would dismiss such a thing, but then I realized it was part of a larger internet trend. I had to know if it was possible to make my grocery store grapes taste like my favorite movie snack with just a few simple ingredients.

There are a few versions of the trick out there, including a TikTok method: Squeeze lime juice over green grapes, roll them in sugar, and then freeze them. On Instagram, TraderJoesList takes another tack: Simply slice Cotton Candy grapes in half and squeeze lime over them. I tried both methods plus a hybrid of the two where I sliced them, hit them with the lime, and then sugared and froze them.

The thing about this hack is that Cotton Candy grapes are already incredibly delicious. They don’t need much (or any) changes to taste like candy; it’s already in the name! So I had a hard time justifying doing anything with them (plus, rolling individual grapes in sugar is a pretty finicky task). In the end, it mostly tasted like grapes rolled in sugar. The sugar didn’t have the pleasant sharpness of Sour Patch Kids — it kind of just felt like there was sugar on my grapes.

The frozen version also muted the flavor of the lime juice enough that it tasted even less like a Sour Patch Kid than the un-frozen version. Maybe, I thought, I was just too much of an adult. I hesitated at giving my kids sugar-coated fruit because I might be setting myself up for a lifetime of refusing to sugar their fruit, but it turned out I should have more faith in my kids’ tastes. “This tastes like what they put on my teeth at the dentist,” my 5-year-old said.

The lime squeezed over the grapes was a nice change-up, adding a little complexity and acid to the very sweet Cotton Candy grapes. But, in all honestly, those grapes already taste like candy and I’m pretty lazy, so I can’t imagine bothering with this again.