Fruit leather, apple or berry
Purée poured thin and dried into a roll-up: the snack children ask for by name, made from the fruit that was too soft for anything else.
Makes
500 ml (2 cups) of purée makes one 33 × 38 cm (13 × 15 inch) sheet, about 8 roll-ups
Active time
20 minutes
Total
6–8 hours in a dehydrator, up to 18 in an oven
Photo JeepersMedia on Flickr · CC BY 2.0
Before you start
What matters for this one
- Dry at 60 °C (140 °F) until there is no indentation in the centre. A tacky middle means moisture, and moisture means mould within a few weeks.
- Use plastic wrap or a purpose-made sheet to line the tray, never waxed paper or foil.
- The lemon juice or ascorbic acid for apple leather is to keep the colour; sweetener is optional and does not affect keeping.
- At room temperature it lasts about a month; for longer, the freezer. If a roll ever smells fermented or shows spots, discard it.
This follows NCHFP: Fruit leathers. Quantities, acid and times are theirs; do not scale the vegetables without scaling everything, and do not change the vinegar, lemon juice or processing time.
Ingredients
- 500 ml (2 cups) fruit purée per sheet: ripe or slightly overripe apples, strawberries, raspberries, haskap, or a mix — stems, peels and seeds removed
- For light-coloured fruit (apple, pear): 2 teaspoons (10 ml) lemon juice or ⅛ teaspoon (375 mg) ascorbic acid per 500 ml of purée
- Optional sweetener: 60–125 ml (¼–½ cup) honey, sugar or corn syrup per 500 ml purée, to taste
- Optional spice: start with ⅛ teaspoon (0.5 ml) cinnamon or similar per 500 ml purée
Method
- 1
Wash the fruit in cool water. Peel and core apples and simmer the chunks with a splash of water until soft; berries can be used raw. Pull out stems and any bad spots — a child can hull and sort while you cook.
- 2
Purée until completely smooth in a blender or food processor. Stir in the lemon juice or ascorbic acid for pale fruit, and sweetener and spice if using. For seedy raspberries, press through a sieve.
- 3
Line the dehydrator tray or a rimmed baking sheet with plastic wrap or the dehydrator’s fruit-leather sheet, smoothing out wrinkles. Do not use waxed paper or foil — the leather welds to them.
- 4
Pour on the purée and spread it about 3 mm (⅛ inch) thick, a little thicker at the edges, which dry first. 500 ml covers a 33 × 38 cm sheet.
- 5
Dry at 60 °C (140 °F): roughly 6–8 hours in a dehydrator, up to 18 hours in an oven on its lowest setting with the door propped open.
- 6
It is done when you press the centre and your finger leaves no dent, and the sheet peels from the plastic in one piece. While still warm, peel it off, roll it up in a fresh piece of plastic wrap, and let it cool.
- 7
Cut the roll into lengths with scissors — the best part for small helpers — and store in an airtight jar or bag.
Keeps: Up to 1 month at room temperature, tightly wrapped; up to 1 year in the freezer. Keeps longer in the fridge than on the shelf.
Variations: Half apple purée with half berry or rhubarb purée stretches a small berry picking and sets a cleaner leather. Unsweetened applesauce from a jar works as the base. Sprinkle with chopped nuts or coconut before drying for a chewier bar.
Tested source: NCHFP: Fruit leathers. Checked October 2026. If a jar did not seal, refrigerate it and use it within a few days. Never taste anything from a jar that is bulging, leaking, spurting or smells wrong — when in doubt, throw it out without tasting.
The crop
Apples: when to pick, how to store, what else to make →
Apples are high-acid, so everything you make from them water-baths without added acid: applesauce (sugar optional, hot pack, 15 minutes for 500 ml jars and 20 for litres at 0–300 m), apple butter (the tested recipe cooks apples down with cider, vinegar and sugar until a spoonful mounds without weeping, then 5 minutes for 500 ml jars), and sliced apples in very light syrup, juice or water (hot pack, 20 minutes). Slices freeze well for pies if you hold them in water with ascorbic acid first or steam-blanch them 2 minutes, then tray-freeze; the texture is for cooking, not eating. Dried rings are the children’s favourite: dip 5 mm slices in ascorbic-acid water, dry at 60 °C (140 °F) for about six hours until leathery with no damp centre, and condition them in a loose jar for a week before sealing. Fresh-pressed cider is unpasteurized: bring it to a boil before giving it to children, older people or anyone with a weakened immune system — freezing keeps the flavour but does not make it safe. What does not work: canning pie filling thickened with flour or cornstarch (only Clear Jel, in a tested recipe, is safe — thickeners stop the heat reaching the centre of the jar), raw-packing apple slices (they float and brown), and putting windfalls in jars or juice — extension food-safety services say drops have been in contact with soil and animals, are often bruised enough for moulds to start inside, and are less acidic than picked fruit, and the mould toxin patulin survives cooking. Windfalls that are sound go in a pie this week; the rest go to the compost.
More for apples
- Water-bath canning
Applesauce, water-bath canned
Sound apples — seconds are fine once the bruises are cut away — into the easiest jar of the year; no added acid needed, and sugar optional.
About 7 × 1 L (quart) jars from 9.5 kg (21 lb) of apples; 6.1 kg (13½ lb) fills 9 × 500 ml (pint) jars · 1¼ hours active
The recipe → - Water-bath canning
Apple butter, water-bath canned
A long, slow pot of apples, cider and spice cooked down to something that mounds on a spoon — the whole house smells of it.
About 9–10 × 500 ml (pint) jars, or twice as many 250 ml · 1½ hours active
The recipe → - Drying
Dried apple rings
Leathery, chewy, lunchbox-sized apple: the drying recipe to start with, because it forgives almost everything except skipping the dip.
About 500 g of dried rings from 5 kg of fresh apples (they lose about nine-tenths of their weight) · 40 minutes active
The recipe →