Homemade Fruit Leather
Updated March 26, 2019
Last week, I tweeted that I was making homemade fruit leather. Well, I guess lots of people want to know how to make homemade fruit leather because I received several tweets and emails asking for the recipe. So today, I am sharing a simple recipe on how to make homemade fruit leather or fruit roll-ups. It is the same recipe-the only difference is if you roll up the final product up or cut into squares:)
Fruit leather can be pricey to buy at the store, but making it at home is cheaper and so easy. I love making it because I feel all domestic. Plus, I love eating it! It is a great healthy snack!
We are still swimming in peaches so I made homemade peach fruit leather, but you can use any fruit you like. Strawberry and raspberry are two of our other favorite fruit flavors. You can also mix fruits! Peach raspberry fruit leather is delish! I try to use whatever fruits are in season.
To make peach fruit leather, I removed the skins and pits of the peaches and gave them a rough chop. I threw them in my Blendtec blender and added a little agave. Our peaches were ripe and super juicy so they only needed a little bit of agave. Taste your fruit and add sweetener according to the sweetness of the fruit. You can also use honey or granulated sugar.
Blend the fruit until smooth. Pour the fruit mixture onto a baking sheet that has been lined with a Silpat and smooth with a spatula. If you don’t have a Silpat, you can use parchment paper or plastic wrap, but Silpats work the best, in my opinion:)
Put the baking sheet in the oven for 6-8 hours, or until the fruit leather is set and the center is not tacky. Your house will smell delicious while the fruit leather is drying in the oven.
When the fruit leather is finished, pull it out of the oven and let it cool to room temperature. Peel back the fruit leather from the Silpat baking mat. It should peel right off. You can cut the fruit leather into squares or long strips if you want to make fruit-roll ups. If you want to make fruit roll-ups, cut a long strip of parchment paper and roll the fruit leather up! It’s that easy!
Store the fruit leather and fruit roll-ups in an air-tight container for up to a month. We always eat it pretty quickly:) You can make a few pans at once. We have double ovens and sometimes I will do four pans at the same time. We love homemade fruit leather.
Give Homemade Fruit Leather a go! It is easy and is a great healthy snack for road trips, lunch boxes, hikes, and every day snacking. Enjoy!
Have you tried this recipe? Leave a comment below and share a photo on Instagram. Tag @twopeasandpod and hashtag it with #twopeasandtheirpod
Homemade Fruit Leather
Ingredients
Instructions
Thank You!!! My six year old and I spent the morning making use of our blueberries, plums and nectarines, super yummy and easy healthy snack!
I tried this with apples but it didn’t work, I think my mistake was not adding water as this recipe is for peaches which are a lot more juicy then apples
For some fruits, you do need pectin as a natural binding agent. You could get 2 type of pectin, one that uses sugar, another is the non-sugar required type.
So question I saw somewhere you can leave it outside covered like in a grill on a hot summers day has anyone tried this method?
I have popped a couple of trays on the dashboard in my car and parked in the driveway on a sunny day. This worked extremely well. You may need to leave in the car for a couple of days depending on the temperature outside.
I am from Fresno California where most of the days are between 95 and 105° in summer. My mom used to set the fruit leather out every summer in the heat and it worked perfectly!
Hi, I am dying to try making mango fruit leather…I noticed you can use plastic wrap…do you know how you would go about doing this? It won’t melt because you are adding moisture to cover all of it…so it will steam but not melt? Is that the general idea?
Thanks for your advice… Can’t wait to try this!
Do you think blueberries would work? I have about 6 pounds of berries in the freezer, some of which will be made into jelly. I like to add lemon juice to brighten the flavor but that will add more liquid. I guess it would just stay in the oven longer?
I haven’t tried blueberries. Let me know if you try it!
Can’t wait to try it .. Fyi .. I have a blendtec also and Love it .. thanks for the recipe
Have you ever done blueberry? Do I need to cook it first or add some other fruit with them.
I use coconut oil on a paper towel to grease my dehydrator racks and or cookie sheets. It tastes good and you don’t have to worry about plastic. I want to store leather more than a month. Worried about mold. How about a cracker in a jar with it?
As long as it’s in an airtight container, it should stay good for a year even. That’s the whole premise of dehydrating. Eliminating the moisture keeps bacteria from growing.
I’m so excited to have found this recipe! My dehydrator quit on me and I really wanted some fruit leather to take on my backpacking trip this weekend. I am making pineapple/mango and didn’t add any sweetener because my fruit was REALLY ripe lol. I have it in the oven right now 😉 can’t wait to see how it turns out. Thank you again for posting this recipe!!!!!
You are welcome!
Can I split up the time in the oven leaving the baking sheet in the oven? I don’t have 6-8 straight time in the home except for when I’m sleeping.
I haven’t tried it this way. I am not sure if it will reduce the time or not! Let me know if you try it!
I tried making this today and I’m not sure if I did it correctly. I used my pampered chef stoneware with 4 cups of strawberries. My pan is 11×17 but my leather burned in about a 1.5″ band around the edges and the whole thing was incredibly thin and cracky. I used a cake pan with a silpat for another one (mixed berries) and that also burned and the inside never set. My oven was at 170* which was the lowest, and I set the timer for 5 hours. The edges were burned the but insides were still wet, so I kept it in there for 3 more hours, checking every 30 minutes. At the end it was still wet but at this point I’d kind of given up Not sure what I did wrong – do you have any insight? I was really looking forward to this and am definitely willing to try again if I know what I can improve upon.
I’m making pear leather but I cook my pears with the skins and pits and then put them through the Victoria strainer. I make applesauce with it all the time. We had a bakery so I can put the sheet pans in the oven when it is off. and come back hours later to see if it is ready to go. May be the lady from Texas could dry her leather in the sun covered with cheese cloth instead of using her oven….
I just tried this. It took way longer to dry (maybe I made it too thick?) but now it’s finally done…and completely stuck to my parchment paper :(. Anyone else have this happen? I think I need a silpat…
Mmm! I made this with berries instead because that was what I had on hand and it was fantastic! It took all my will power not to eat the whole tray in a day D; Thanks for this!
I’ve also featured it here: http://destinationfemme.com/junk-food-dupes-the-healthy-version-evc/ 🙂
Wonderful, very cool! Thank you so very much for sharing this! I think my finicky cat 3yo teething with revenge of the molars toddler will enjoy this! 😀 I will give it a try and keep you posted.
Looking forward to making it. Have you ever made fruit sticks from purée just not as dehydrated? Been searching for years for a recipe
I made strawberry/mango and strawberry ones yesterday! I used parchment paper and I don’t really like to use it for the fruit leathers because it clumps up in the middle and doesn’t really spread well:/ it comes out cooked uneven semi raw in the middle. I love making them since my kids love them. My oven is pretty small so I had to get new cookie sheets to fit it:/ so getting a silpat is kind of hard since the one I have are a little snug in my cookie sheets:/ can you walk me through in getting the right size??Thanks for the recipe!
pearfect and healthy recipes i love to use them in my kitchen
great work and thanks for shearing
My mouth is watering while reading the recipe. Now, I just can’t wait for peach season (so I can get them cheaper) to try it.
Thanks for the delicious ideas.
Is this tough or soft? My one year old doesn’t have teeth yet so she can’t really bit things. Wondering if this would be okay for her
It would be a choking hazard for a 1-year-old. Stick with foods that easily dissolve.
Does it matter whether it’s being dehydrated at top, bottom, or middle rack>
Middle is what I do!
I always love to do fruit leather in my dehydrator. My kids love them a lot!
Can you freeze fruit leather so you can have strawberry leather in February
did you freeze it?
We are vegans and we have a toddler; This was an amazing change up on fruit! Thank you so much!! We all loved it so much!!
I need to try this!
I have been cooking mine for 8 hours, at 170, now and the middle is still very much the applesauce I put in there and the outside is getting VERY dry….. help?
Thank you for this recipe! I tried it on a parchment paper and sadly ruined 3 cups… had you tried it on parchment paper before? My oven didn’t go down to 150 – lowest was 170 – so that definitely could have contributed. I’m just sad. My husband was really looking forward to it but I can’t peel it off the parchment paper at all. Any suggestions?
Hi, just wondering if anyone else has encountered strange drying that results in cracks and fissures forming in the puree as it dries? If so, do you know what is causing this and how to prevent it? I make a lot of fruit leather, and it seems to happen some times but not others. Thanks!
More blending. Your puree isn’t homogenized.
This sounds amazing but i only see 1 issue. You can’t put plastic wrap in an oven…it would melt and ruin the fruit leather….
Actually if you use plastic wrap that can go in the microwave you can use it in the oven at 170^ and have no problems. First time I made it I used parchment and it completely stuck and was ruined. This time I tried it with parchment and plastic on foil lined cookie sheets, but I sprayed them both with cooking spray before cooking and they both worked great.
I was wondering if you can do the same with the pulp from the juicers… use the pulp for the leather strip?
that would just be the fibre part of the fruit.. i don’t think it would bind or taste v nice..
Hi Maria, I have an excess of Feijoas here in Mansfield, Victoria, Australia. Have you done Feijoa fruit roll ups? If so, did you cook the flesh before you did puree? I have made heaps of Feijoa Jam & loved it but looking for something different to try with the last 30 odd kgs of smaller fruit. Thanks Janene
HI Janene – did you end up trying this?
Can pie glaze work for fruit leathers?
I do not add any sugar or cook the fruit vitaminmix does a great job .my family love it. I freeze it if not using in next month or two then I would keep it in fridge till needed..
Freezer makes it brittle till defrosted.