Description
This homemade strawberry fruit leather looks just like the childhood snack you remember, and it's super easy to make with just 5 all-natural ingredients.
Ingredients
- 1 lb fresh strawberries, hulled (~460g)
- 1 medium-sized honeycrisp apple, peeled and diced (160g or 1 1/2 cups diced)
- 1/4 cup honey (84g)
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice (~1 large lemon or 43g)
- Optional: 1/2 tsp blue spirulina (or a handful of blueberries or blackberries*)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to its lowest temperature (ours was 170˚F).
- Add strawberries, apples, honey, and lemon juice to a blender and blend until completely smooth. You shouldn't see any seeds.
- Optional: soak a piece of parchment paper in water for a minute or two, dry it with a kitchen towel, and place it onto a rimmed 13x18" baking sheet. Wetting the parchment paper will help the fruit leather stick better. You can also use a silpat, but you won't get that classic peel-away paper characteristic.
- Pour about 90% of your strawberry mixture into the sheet pan, and spread it out from the center towards the sides, so the sides are slightly thicker than the middle. Since the fruit leather dries from the outside in, the outsides will cook faster than the middle. If you leave too much pooled in the center, it will still be wet by the time the edges start to get crispy.
- Add the spirulina to the remaining strawberry mixture and blend or whisk together. You can also use a handful of blueberries or blackberries to color this mixture. We tested it several times with fruit, and it always split slightly in the sections where the two colors meet, which is why we opted for spirulina. It still tastes good, but won't look as nice.
- To create those tie-dye swirls, swirl your blue strawberry mixture on top of your red. Use a chopstick or knife to first make lines outward from the middle, then swirl in a circular pattern.
- Transfer to oven and use a dish towel or oven mitt the prop open the oven door slightly. Bake for 5-6 hours until the leather feels a bit spongy but doesn't give way when you touch it. If there are any wetter spots, it's not done yet.
- Use scissors to cut into strips, roll and enjoy! You can store for up to a month at room temperature, or up to 3 months in the freezer.
Notes
Bang your tray on your countertop a few times to remove excess air bubbles from the mixture.
Some crispiness around the edges is almost inevitable with oven cooking. Those pieces will still be delicious, but may be hard to roll up. You can cut off the super crispy sections and eat separately.
Reviving crispy fruit leather: If you happen to overcook your leather, spray it with a spray bottle of water or pat it down with a damp towel and wait a while. Keep repeating this process until the leather is pliable.
Rotate your baking sheet every hour or so, if you can.
We cooked ours at 170˚F, which is the lowest a lot of home ovens go. Any hotter and it might be difficult to cook the leather evenly. You can definitely use a lower temperature if your oven goes as low as 140˚F or 150˚F. You'll just have to cook it longer.
Prop your oven door open slightly: Using a kitchen towel or oven mitt, prop your door open. This will help any moisture from the leather to escape.
Convection: If your oven has convection, perfect! This will speed up the drying process. You'll want to check in more frequently to ensure it doesn't get overcooked.
Wetting your parchment paper removes the stiffness from your paper, which will (mostly) prevent large wrinkles from forming in your leather as it cooks. Some wrinkling is inevitable.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 5 hours
- Category: Snacks
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 63
- Sugar: 14 g
- Sodium: 1.3 mg
- Fat: 0.2 g
- Carbohydrates: 16.6 g
- Fiber: 1.7 g
- Protein: 0.5 g