How to Make Homemade Fruit Leather with a Dehydrator

Homemade fruit leather brings me back to summers as a kid when my mom would make fruit leather for us and we would devour it as fast as she made it. I like to do this in the summer when we have extra fruit available from our orchard or from whatever is in season: strawberries, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, apples, etc. This delicious fruit leather is also great to do with fruit from the farmer’s market or frozen fruit that you might have that needs to be used up before it gets too much of a freezer burn. So let me show you how I make your own fruit leather.

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I don’t really follow a recipe and I just wing it when I make my fruit leather but I’ve written everything down in a recipe below so that those that want something specific to follow can print this out.

First you will need a food dehydrator and silicone dehydrator sheets (I did also use the oven as an alternative). This is what my mom used growing up and that’s how I have always made my fruit leather. My dehydrator is used for a variety of drying throughout the harvest season. A food dehydrator is very versatile and it’s a great way to preserve your summer harvest of vegetables, fruits and herbs. It can also be used to make dried meat jerky.

To start making fruit leather take four cups of frozen (mostly-thawed and drained) or fresh fruit and place in a blender. I have multiple trays in my dehydrator so that’s why my fruit amount is larger. And then I also like to add a little sweetness to my fruit leather by adding some of our homemade canned applesauce. If you want to do the same but don’t have homemade applesauce just look for low sugar or no-sugar applesauce. My kids are not fans of just plain applesauce but once I add it into the fruit leather it creates a nicer texture and they don’t mind it.

I always create a fruit mixture when I make my fruit leather, usually a combination of fruit in our pantry or anything that has been frozen and needs used. Another great option is any type of overripe fruit.

Supply List for Dehydrated Fruit Leather

• Food dehydrator (we have had ours for over 15 years as we received it at our wedding and it is still working great)
• Extra food dehydrator trays
• Silicone dehydrator sheets

If you are using a fruit that has seeds you will need to decide if you want to remove the seeds. I don’t remove the seeds because it just takes more work but this is a personal preference. I know some people don’t like raspberry or blackberry seeds. And so I just keep the seeds in, and we eat it with the seeds and it still tastes the same. You can use a fine mesh strainer or cheesecloth to strain out the seeds.

If you don’t want to use a blender you could also use a food processor to puree the fruit. I do not add any added sugar as I think the fruit is sweet enough on it’s own, however if you find you want to change the sweetness you can always add some apple, pear or other type of fruit juice or even maple syrup to help as a sweetener. The blended fruit will create about 2 cups of puree.

Once you’ve got it all blended together lightly spray your dehydrator sheets with a little bit of olive oil spray and use a silicone brush to wipe down each tray. For the best results try not to get it too heavily oiled otherwise your fruit leather will be really oily. And then go ahead and pour your fruit puree onto each trays and gently spread it around with a spatula. When pouring try not to get too thick, as it will take forever to dehydrate.

Once all the trays are filled, put the top on your dehydrator, and then let it do its magic! I set my temperature at around 250. And then I check it after usually two hours. The drying process will depend on how thick the fruit leather was when poured onto the trays. I also did a batch in the oven if you don’t have a food dehydrator.

I did the oven batch on a baking sheet with a silicone mat at 250 degrees for about 1.5 hours. I have an oven that is a conventional oven so I do not know how well it would work in a convection oven (I am not a big fan of the oven as the edges were more burnt that that of the dehydrator).

Then once it’s done (it will be dry to the touch) all I do is tear each sheet of fruit leather in half, and then I roll it up with plastic wrap. The finished homemade fruit roll ups get wrapped up and stored in the pantry at room temperature. My family loves these as a great snack after school or even packed in lunch boxes.

Another storage option if you are trying to reduce your plastic waste is to wrap the fruit roll sheets in wax paper and store in an airtight container. The fruit leather can also be cut into smaller strips with a sharp knife if you want a smaller serving size.

Favorite Fruits to Use for Fruit Leather

• Strawberries
• Peaches
• Pears
• Bananas (they are great to use when they start becoming overripe)
• Applesauce