Homemade Fruit Roll-ups

I spent one day last week making homemade fruit leather. It turned out tasting great but not so pretty… I am going to make some more this week and will post pictures of this week’s batch also.

I used a dehydrator to dry the fruit and my food processor to pulverize it. It only took me about an hour to make the fruit goo, and then it took about 10 hours to dry it. I know that sounds like a lot of time but you just set it on your counter and let it go. The dehydrator does all the work.

I am currently using my mom’s old dehydrator and it works great. They are not expensive to buy (under 30 dollars) and we use ours all the time. Some other things we have dried include: fruit, beef jerky, chili (that was my hubby's project and it turned out great!) and flowers. Just making beef jerky yourself would cover the cost of buying the dehydrator and it tastes SO much better!

Here is what I learned:

- Fill the fruit roll up trays very full. When everything starts to dry, the fruit shrinks and none of my trays stayed in a solid sheet (they all had holes from not filling the trays enough).

- Make sure your fruit is very soupy, no chunks! The chunks mess up the texture of the roll-up.

- I lined the trays with parchment paper.  I'm not sure that it was helpful and I will try it without next time and let you know which way works better.

- The directions say to spray the tray with cooking spray.  I did this but I think I got a little over excited. The bottoms of some of the fruit roll-ups were oily. Oily = yucky, so don’t get too crazy with the spray.

Here is a picture of my pretty fruit, I used four quarts of strawberries and one pineapple. I did not put in any sugar or any other type of sweetener. The fruit was perfect all by itself! This made four trays.

I then cleaned the fruit well, cut off all the stems, and my loving hubby helped me skin the pineapple because he cares and likes to eat while he helps.

Put everything in the food processor, you could also use a blender.

Then dump it on to the tray

That’s it! Set your dehydrator to 135 - 145 for 10 hours, but I think it will take longer next time because the trays will be thicker.

Here is how I am storing the finished rolls.

I wrapped each piece in plastic wrap and then put them in an air tight jar. They should last two or three weeks this way. Now I hate working with plastic wrap but I do have a tip, if you put the roll in the freezer for a few hours before you need to use it, it will not stick together as bad. So, when you start drying the fruit, throw your plastic wrap in the freezer!

Overall I think that this project was a success! The baby LOVED them and it cost me around $8.00 for the fruit and that made four trays. The pre-made stuff for babies is $2.75 for a box and it has five little strips in it so I think that making it myself is much more cost effective, yummier, and less processed!