Homemade Fruit Snacks

With fresh fruit and just 3 other ingredients, you can make homemade fruit snacks that are chewy, delicious, and packed with real fruit flavor. This recipe also works for homemade gummy worms, gummy hearts or gummy bears!

Fruit snacks were (and still are!) a lunch box staple, so why not make them at home with fresh fruit instead of buying store bought gummies that are full of artificial flavors, sweeteners, and corn syrup?

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This recipe is part of our Better Than Store-Bought series, where we cook up homemade versions of your favorite store bought snacks. These gummies look and taste amazing, and they're really not that hard to make. The end result is so rewarding, and the process is super easy, so it's a great activity to do with your kids.

If you're looking for more delicious homemade snacks that you and your kids will love, check out our Homemade Freeze Pops or these Homemade Cheez-Its.

Jump to:

• Homemade Fruit Snacks Ingredients
• Ingredient Spotlight
• How to Make this Homemade Fruit Snacks Recipe
• Substitutions and Variations
• Equipment
• Storage
• Tips and FAQ
• Don't skip drying out your gummies.
• More homemade snack recipes
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Reviews

Homemade Fruit Snacks Ingredients

• Fresh fruit: we chose pineapple, watermelon, strawberry, and black seedless grapes for our gummies, but just about any fruit will work. Keep in mind that some fruits (like pineapple and kiwi) need to be heated to a higher temperature before adding the gelatin in order to set. You can find more details in the recipe below!
• Lemon juice: freshly squeezed lemon juice really helps to bring out each fruit's flavor, and it also helps to prevent oxidation and discoloration. We choose to bloom our gelatin in lemon juice instead of water to prevent diluting the flavor and color of our gummies.
• Honey or agave: we prefer the flavor of honey, but it is harder to work with, and more expensive than agave.
• Gelatin: After making these several times, we have realized that the better quality the gelatin, the better they will taste! This beef gelatin is the best tasting one we've found so far. You can also use less expensive gelatin (like the Knox brand in the photos above), but keep in mind that it has a stronger flavor and smell. If you're a vegan or vegetarian, you can substitute gelatin for agar agar, which uses a different process entirely.

Ingredient Spotlight

Pineapple: A lot of online resources will caution against using pineapple in gummies, because it contains bromelain. You may have heard of tenderizing meat with pineapple, and it works because bromelain breaks down proteins. Since gelatin is a protein, we need to deactivate this enzyme if we want our pineapple gummies to set.

Luckily, all we have to do is cook the blended pineapple for 8 minutes at 176˚F.

Some other fruits, like mango and kiwi, also contain enzymes that make it difficult for gelatin to set, so if you choose to use them, you'll need to follow the same process.

How to Make this Homemade Fruit Snacks Recipe

STEP 1: Blend the fruit. Add fruit to a blender and blend until completely smooth.

STEP 2: Bloom the gelatin. In a small container, sprinkle gelatin evenly over lemon juice, then stir thoroughly until there are no dry grains visible. Let sit for 5 minutes.

STEP 3: Heat up the fruit purée. While the gelatin blooms, combine fruit purée with honey or agave in a small saucepan over low heat, and stir until combined. You want to heat the purée enough to melt the gelatin (>~120˚F), but you don't want to bring it to a boil, which will denature the gelatin.

NOTE: There's one major exception here. Pineapple (and some other fruits, including mango and kiwi) contains enzymes, including bromelain, that will essentially "eat" the gelatin and prevent the gummies from setting. To deactivate the enzyme, you must heat the pineapple purée to at least 176˚F for about 8 minutes.

STEP 4: Combine fruit purée with gelatin. Add gelatin and lemon juice mixture to the fruit puree, and stir until it's completely dissolved. Remove pan from heat and let cool for about 5 minutes.

STEP 5: Fill up your molds. Give your silicone molds a light spray with avocado oil or cooking spray. Use a spoon or a dropper to fill up the fruit molds, then move to your refrigerator. Refrigerate for an hour and a half to let them set up.

STEP 6: Air dry your gummies. Remove from the molds and place on a wire rack, and let sit for 8 hours or overnight. The gummies will shrink significantly and achieve a more intense flavor and a chewy, gummy texture.

Substitutions and Variations

• Use any fruit - You can use any fruit you want in these gummies, like apple, cherry, mango, kiwi, or even pear or pomegranate. Just be sure to check if your fruit contains enzymes that make it harder for gelatin to set, which will necessitate a slightly longer cooking process.
• Agar agar instead of gelatin - If you're vegan or vegetarian, you can use agar agar or a combination of agar agar and sea moss. There are lots of resources online about using agar agar instead of gelatin.
• Make these into gummy worms or gummy bears! It's the exact same process, you'll just need to use different molds for the shape.
• Make them sour: Once you dry out your gummies, you can toss them in a 4:1 mixture of sugar to citric acid. It's essential that the gummies are dried out before doing this.

Equipment

You will need silicone molds to make these gummies. There are some popular molds on amazon, and we would recommend avoiding the top-rated ones, as the molds are simply too small. Even before the fruit snacks dry out, the gummies would be tiny, even for a toddler.

We'd recommend using larger molds, like these. The specific molds in this post that we used for the pineapple, strawberry, and watermelon were purchased at Michael's.

This is the mold we use to make gummy worms.

Storage

Once the gummies have dried out overnight, move them to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

We haven't tried freezing them, and probably wouldn't recommend it, but you could place them in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 months without any problems.

Tips and FAQ

More tips

• We made a berry champagne heart version for Valentine's Day, using raspberries or strawberries for the fruit, and adding 1 tablespoon lemon juice + 2 tablespoon champagne for the gelatin mixture. Otherwise, the recipe is the exact same!
• Lightly spray your molds with cooking spray to ensure the gummies pop out easily.
• Make sure you cook your pineapple to 176˚F for 8 minutes to ensure it sets properly. All other fruits only have to be heated to about 120˚F. Make sure the purée isn't boiling when you add the gelatin! This will ruin your gummies.
• Sprinkle the gelatin over the top of the lemon juice evenly. This will help to prevent clumping by ensuring that each grain of gelatin is saturated with water. Let the gelatin "bloom" for a few minutes before adding it to the fruit purée. It will come out of your container in one solid hockey-puck like piece.
• It may be difficult to blend your fruit in a large blender. If this is the case, you can up the quantity of the recipe, or add a tablespoon or so of water to the blender to get things going.
• Don't worry about straining your fruit purées, just blend them well and you'll have no problems.
• Let the fruit purée cool a bit before adding to the molds. This will make the mixture easier to pipe.
• To transfer the mixture into the molds, we used a dropper, but a food grade syringe, a small measuring cup with a pour spout, or even a small spoon would all work.

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