Sugar/Citric Acid Coating giving Gumthe Bears a Wet Look

Be careful of substituting agar or any other "firm" gelling agent; you're likely to end up something closer to Turkish Delight and agar in particular has the property of syneresis (meaning that your gummy candies will dry up fast).

I can think of a few things that would alter the consistency of a gelatin candy/dessert:

• First, it is very important to let the gelatin bloom. When it says to "soften" it in cold water, you need to let it sit there for a good 5 minutes or so until it has absorbed plenty of water and you can actually see a gel forming. Don't stir it at this point!

• All gelatins are not created equal; you need to look at the bloom strength. I think the most common kind in supermarkets is Knox, which has a bloom strength of 225 and is usually what most gelatin recipes calls for. "Platinum" gelatin (normally sold in sheets) goes up to 260, "Gold" is generally around 200, "Silver" is 160, and "Bronze" can be as low as 125 - practically useless for this. If you managed to find powdered gelatin with a bloom strength of under 200, you would need to increase the quantity or else end up with jelly.

• Although gelatin does not require particularly high temperatures to hydrate, you do need to heat the solution to at least 50° C before you set it. If you don't do this, it won't dissolve properly.

• When using powdered gelatin, you're normally supposed to bloom and dissolve it in the same liquid. The recipe you have seems to call for chucking the bloomed gelatin directly into your syrup; this may be deliberate in order to produce some effect I'm not familiar with, but it sounds like an oversight to me. Instead I would heat the gelatin/water solution up to 50° C after blooming (as described above) and then add that to the syrup.

• Finally, as Computerish says, make sure you're heating the syrup solution enough to get all the sugar dissolved, and you might even need to reduce it a little (let it simmer). The more you reduce it, the more viscous the syrup itself will become (at the extreme end turning into pure caramelized sugar, which is rock-hard). So if you're absolutely sure that you are using the gelatin correctly, this would be the next line to pursue. If the syrup is actually syrupy at room temperature then it should form great chewy gummies, but if it's watery then you're more likely to end up with Jell-O.

It could just be that it wasn't mixed thoroughly - little droplets of dissolved gelatin intermingled with the cool whip would certainly give you a grainy texture. Whisking thoroughly, or even using a hand mixer, could avoid some of this.

But failing that, it's possible that it's simply prone to separation. Cool whip is a sort of fake cream, emulsified fats and water, and the dissolved jello is pretty much water. They might tend to separate a little before the gelatin makes it all set up. If that's the case, you probably have to work a little harder for your mousse; if the gelatin is added straight to the creamy/custardy base, there's no water-gelatin mixture to separate out.