Mmm… Homemade fruit leather. One of our favourite treats! I’ll admit that it took me a while to delve into the world of making our own at first, but once I realized that it doesn’t require any special equipment and it’s pretty much as easy as making a fruit sauce, I was hooked. It’s a great way to use up overripe fruit and it makes for a perfect sugary fruit snack alternative in lunch boxes too!
Amidst our packing frenzy, the figs on our lovely backyard fig tree have decided that now is the time to become perfectly ripe. This poses a problem for a few different reasons…. 1) The tree is big and old and produces a TON of fruit, 2) I’m the only one in our family that truly enjoys fresh figs, 3) Keeping up with the daily picking of the fruit is time consuming, and 4) If I don’t keep up with the picking, our backyard becomes a sticky mess filled with wasps.
In an effort to avoid a waspy sticky mess of a backyard, I’ve been giving away boxes of figs to almost every person I’ve been in contact with, I’ve been adding 3 or 4 to our green smoothie each morning, and I’ve been eating them fresh as my nightly treat, but that just wasn’t enough. I needed a way to use up a ton of figs all at once, and preferably it would be something that the other members of my family would enjoy too. Enter fruit leather…
Gracen loves fruit leather, and though it can be a little intimidating if you’ve never made it before, it’s truly one of the easiest, most forgiving things to make. And no special equipment is needed! If you have some fruit, an oven, a baking pan, and some parchment paper, you can easily make your own fruit leather at home.
I’ve made several batches of this stuff already, and it’s getting eaten up like nobody’s business! Plus I’ve changed my method a little bit and it’s now even easier for me to make my own fruit leather. Here’s how to do it…
Apple Fig Fruit Leather
Preheat oven to 125 degrees (or lowest setting) and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper (paper should cover all edges of the pan).
Place all ingredients in a covered pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer fruit {still covered} for about 30 minutes, or until super soft.
Pour everything into a food processor or good blender and purée until smooth.
Pour fruit mixture out onto parchment-lined baking sheet and use the back of a spatula to spread the fruit purée out so it covers the entire base of the pan. Gently shake the pan make the purée as even as possible.
Pop into the oven for approximately 8 hours (I put ours in just before going to bed). You want to remove the fruit leather from the oven when it’s still sticky to the touch, but not at all wet. You may find that part of your fruit leather will be done earlier than the rest. In this case, you’ll need to remove the fruit leather from the oven, cut off the finished part, and return the still wet to the touch part to the oven for another hour or two.
When finished, simply remove the large sheet of fruit leather from the baking sheet, cut of the excess parchment paper around the edges, and cut directly through both the remaining parchment and fruit leather to create strips. Roll strips and secure with baker’s twine or washi tape. Store in an air-tight container or jar.
Enjoy!
See our other homemade fruit leather recipes here:
Berry Banana // Apple Pear Carrot
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After getting our batch of banana berry fruit leather in the oven, Gracen and I decided to give round two a go, this time with a different combination of ingredients…
We had a couple of bruised pears that I really wanted to use, and while digging in the fridge for an apple, Grae suggested carrots too (sure, why not?) We added the other half of our lemon to the mix and called it good.
This batch took a wee bit more prep than the last one. Grae peeled carrots {ever so cautiously}…
While I prepped the apples and pears (I peeled the apple, but not the pears).
When everything was ready to go, my little sous chef added the produce to a big pot…
And attempted to squeeze the juice from the lemon. (Her exact words just before this shot was taken were, “Com’on, lemon… Why you not working??”)
Then she poured in some water (quite a bit more than with our first batch because carrots don’t produce their own juice while stewing).
Then we popped our pot on the oven, put a lid on it, and let everything simmer for about half an hour on medium heat.
It looked absolutely horrible when it was done cooking (like some kind of veggie stew gone terribly wrong), but smelled delicious.
During the stewing process, my little girl helper was replaced by this equally cute kitty helper. Luckily, she likes to help just as much and saw to it that our mixture was pureed perfectly.
Then we poured it out onto a parchment-lined sheet.
This time we were a little more careful to make sure the mixture was an even thickness all over the base of the pan. Then it was into the oven on the lowest temperature.
After eight hours, we had a lovely sheet of fruit leather.
Once again using kitchen scissors, I cut the sheet into strips…
And rolled it up using strips of parchment paper and baker’s twine.
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
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