Ingredients

The following ingredients have 22 Servings
  • 4 cups ripe fruit (fresh or frozen)
  • 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (fresh or bottled)
  • Sugar to taste (I like to add at least 1 tablespoon for taste and up to ⅓ of a cup, depending on ripeness of fruit)
  • 2 large rimmed baking sheets
  • 2 baking mats or pieces of parchment paper to fit baking sheets

Instruction

  • Prepare the fruit by washing it and removing any large seeds or pits (remove the seeds from pears and apples and the pits from plums, peachs, and apricots, the small seeds in berries I don’t worry about). There’s no need to remove any skins. 
  • Cut any larger fruit into halves or quarters to help the blender process them. 
  • Place the fruit and lemon juice in the jar of your blender. Blend until very smooth. If you are having trouble getting the fruit to process (it’ll depend on how moist/ripe/type of fruit), add as little water as possible to help the blender process the fruit. I’ll generally add 1 tablespoon at a time until the blender is able to work well. Often times you won’t need to add any water at all, that’s preferred as it will shorten you drying time to have less water in the fruit puree. You can also use small amounts of fruit juice to help the blender along instead of water.
  • Taste the fruit leather and adjust the taste with sugar. You’ll want it to be a bit sweet but not too sweet. 
  • Blend in the sugar if you added any.
  • Place the baking mats or parchment paper in the bottom of the baking sheets (my baking sheets are 11 by 16 inches). 
  • Divide the fruit mixture evenly between the two pans, pouring it into the center of the pan. 
  • Use a spatula (an offset metal spatula like you’d use to ice a cake works great), to evenly spread the fruit leather over the pan taking care to not touch the edges of the pan or get off of the baking mat/parchment paper. The more even you can spread it the better.
  • Adjust your oven racks so that they are in the upper middle and lower middle of the oven. 
  • Place the prepared pans into the oven on the two racks and turn your oven on to the lowest temperature it’ll allow. Mine will let me bake at as low as 170 degrees F. The lower the better.