How to Make Easy and Delicious Fruit Leather

 Yummy, healthy, super-easy and cheap to make – Fruit Leather is the ultimate in grab and go snacks.Making fruit leathers at home is really easy, fun to do with the kids, and you get to control exactly what goes into them!

Here we show you how to make Plum and Apple Leather, but you can use almost any fruit – soft fruit such as mango and strawberries just need to be pureed, so you can miss out the cooking step.

How to Make Easy and Delicious Fruit Leather

Bowl full of Plums
2 Cooking Apples (these cook down to a purée better than eaters)
Juice of a Lemon

Stone the plums and peel the apples. Throw them into a large pan with the lemon juice and about 100mls water.

Cook until soft, and puree the mixture with a handheld blender. If you want to add sugar, honey or another sweetener to taste do it now. If I make with a fruit with lots of pips such as blackberries I usually push it through a sieve rather than using the blender.

I use food wrap to line my trays as I find the finished leather peels off much more easily than with paper.  Pour the purée on to the sheet and stick it into a cool oven set it as low as you can – you are aiming to dry it not cook it! 

It can take anything from about 8hrs to about 16hrs to totally dry out. I have taken it out for a couple of hours mid-drying before, when I’ve wanted the oven space.  I’ve left it on the side with no ill effects, so don’t be scared of it!

When its dry to touch, peel it off the food wrap. I then lay it on a clean piece of baking parchment, cut it into strips, and roll them up. Apparently fruit leather will keep in a cool,dark place for up to a year when dried properly.  We always eat our fruit leather up pretty quickly, so I can’t speak from experience!

My kids absolutely love fruit leather. We make it often and have shared some other recipes for it here on the blog. Why not check out our foraged version Stinging Nettle, Apple and Pear Fruit Leather or our Apple, Rhubarb and Elderflower version for the ultimate healthy snack, or our slightly grosser version Edible Fruit Scabs which are great fun for Halloween.

We also have some fabulous savoury snack recipes that are brilliant for kids. Our venison jerky is delicious and makes a great snack for lunch boxes, and our nettle crisps are packed full of nutrition too.