One of the few ready-made packaged foods I buy now and then is organic all-fruit fruit leather strips.  They’re a very special treat for Miss G and I don’t feel horrible about letting her have one once and a while (as long as her teeth are brushed extra well that day), but I’ve always known that I should probably be making them at home instead.  Recently, our local grocery store stopped restocking their organic fruit leather supply (I think they’re getting rid of the current stock and then no longer carrying them) and they were down to just two lonely strips on our last visit. It was the perfect push I needed to try making my own. 

Today I asked Gracen if she’d like to try making some fruit leather of our own, and she responded enthusiastically with, “Sure!  Purple ones.” so I decided we’d try  a berry variety first.  Since we don’t really buy many berries when they’re out of season, we went with what we had in the freezer – strawberries, raspberries, and wild blueberries.  Plus an apple and half a lemon for texture and a little kick.

As we were prepping the fruit, which really only consists of peeling and coring the apple, we decided to add a banana in the mix for sweetness.

With all of the ingredients ready to go, Gracen popped them into a large pot…

Then squeezed the lemon on top…

And added a little bit of water.

Then we popped the mixture on the stove to stew over medium heat for a while.

About a half hour later, this is what we had.

We let it cool for a little bit and then dumped it in the food processor to puree for a bit.

With our mixture nice and smooth, we lined a baking sheet with parchment paper…

And poured our berry mixture on top.

Using a spatula, we spread the mixture out to cover the entire base of the pan (on our next attempt, I’d spend a little more time getting it as evenly as possible) and put the pan in the oven on the lowest temperature.

Eight and a half hours later (yes – it takes a long time!) this is what we had.

We carefully peeled off the parchment paper…

And then I used kitchen scissors to cut it into strips.

A little parchment paper and baking twine later, we had our own homemade {and healthy!} version of a Fruit Roll-Up.  ☺

Banana Berry Fruit Leather 

• 1 cup of raspberries, frozen or fresh
• 1 cup of strawberries, frozen or fresh
• 1 cup of blueberries, frozen or fresh
• 1 ripe banana
• 1 Granny Smith apple
• juice of 1/2 of a lemon
• 1/3 cup of water