Snack Healthy With This Homemade Fruit Leather

Fruit Leather
Image via l.lika/Depositphotos

If you’re trying to fit in “5 a day”, then fruit leather is a fun way to reach your quota. The snack is easy to roll up for when you’re on the go, and because you’ve made it yourself, you don’t have to worry about artificial colorants or any other of those nasty things being hidden inside your leather. 

Ingredients:

  • Fresh fruit (apricots, peaches, plums, berries, apples, pears, or grapes)
  • Water
  • Lemon juice
  • Sugar (optional)
  • Cinnamon and nutmeg (optional)

Instructions:

  1. Rinse and chop the fruit. Taste to see how sweet the fruit is and if sugar will be needed. 
  2. Place the fruit in a large saucepan. Add half a cup of water for every 4 cups of chopped fruit.
  3. Bring the fruit to a simmer, cover it, and allow to cook on low heat for 10-15 minutes, or until the fruit is cooked through. Uncover and stir.
  4. Mash up the fruit in the pot.
  5. Add sugar, lemon juice, and spices to taste. If needed, add the sugar in small amounts (1 tablespoon at a time). 
  6. Continue to simmer and stir until any added sugar is completely dissolved and the fruit purée has thickened
  7. Put the mashed fruit through a sieve, or purée the fruit thoroughly in a blender or food processor so that it is very smooth.
  8. Line a rimmed baking sheet with heat-proof plastic wrap and pour out the purée to about an 1/8- to ¼-inch thickness. 
  9. Heat the oven to 140°F and place the baking sheet in the oven. Try to keep any plastic wrap from touching the sides of the oven or the oven racks. Make sure that the plastic wrap hasn’t folded back over on top of the purée. If this happens, the purée won’t dry out.
  10. Allow the fruit to dry out in the oven for as long as it takes for the purée to form fruit leather. This can be 8-12 hours. The fruit leather is ready when it is no longer sticky to the touch.
  11. When the fruit leather is ready, you can easily peel it off from the plastic wrap. To store it, roll the leather in its plastic wrap, place in an airtight container and store in the refrigerator or freezer.