There are a variety of snack foods and travel-sized goodies available in the supermarket, but most of them have added sugars and salts and come with a lot of packaging (read: unnecessary garbage). Fruit leathers made at home are a healthy vegan travel food and devoid of added sugars, salts and excess packaging.
Making fruit leather requires no added sugar and the only equipment needed is a blender and food dehydrator. It takes only five minutes to puree the fruit in a blender and the dehydrator does the rest of the work.
Stored in a glass mason jar in the refrigerator, these fruit rolls make the perfect on-the-go vegan snack food.
Basic Fruit Leather Recipe
Makes about 2 cups of fruit puree for a dehydrator full of thin fruit rolls
Ingredients
- 2 apples
- 1 cup raspberries (freshly picked from the patch, or frozen from summer picking)
- Juice from one lemon
Directions
- Blend fruit together with two tablespoons of water, only enough to get the fruit moving.
- Spread onto dehydrator sheets in a layer about ¼ inch thick (parchment paper works well as a semi-reusable dehydrator sheet) and place onto dehydrator trays.
- Turn your dehydrator on and wait.
- Dehydration time will vary from 7 – 10 hours, depending on the type of dehydrator, the moisture content of the puree and humidity of the room.
- Check the fruit rolls after five hours to see how they are doing.
- Once they are leathery to the touch, dry, but still pliable, remove them from the parchment paper and allow to air dry on the dehydrator trays or a plate for another thirty minutes to cool.
- Store the homemade fruit leathers in glass jars, or pack away in zip-top bags to take along on a hike.
Spring Fruit Leather Recipe
Spring fruits like apricots, blueberries, cherries, rhubarb, nectarines, strawberries are a welcome change to the hearty winter fruits of apples and pears. In the Basic Fruit Leather Recipe, replace the apple with apricots or nectarines. To make a strawberry-rhubarb pie fruit leather, blend together one cup cooled, sweetened to taste and cooked rhubarb, one nectarine and one cup of chopped fresh strawberries.
Summer Fruit Leather Recipe
Summer fruits like blackberries, cherries, figs, grapes, plums, raspberries and peaches make very flavourful fruit leathers. In the Basic Fruit Leather Recipe, replace the apple with peaches or plums and use the same portion of any type of fresh summer berry. The lemon is optional when using stone fruits.
Autumn Fruit Leather Recipe
During October and November, cranberries are harvested in the Pacific Northwest, Minnesota and Massachusetts, while oranges are being harvested in Florida, California and Arizona. These autumn fruits are a perfect combination in fruit leather.
For a delicious cranberry sauce fruit roll, blend together one apple, the juice and pulp from two oranges, a cup of cooked cranberries, the zest of one orange and one teaspoon of brown rice syrup.
Winter Fruit Leather Recipe
The season for deliciously ripe oranges, pomegranates and grapefruits is short, so it’s good to make some homemade fruit leathers with these fruits to enjoy all winter long. In the Basic Fruit Leather Recipe, replace the juice of a lemon with that of an orange or grapefruit and use cooked cranberries or fresh pomegranate seeds instead of frozen summer berries.
