Fruit Roll Up Learnings

Jenni Lippold
Sep 28, 2015
2 min read

I saw on my friend Jen Hall's Facebook that she made fruit roll ups a few weeks back. I said "Well gee, I've already been drying a bunch of fruit to replace my family's usage of 'fruit snack packs', I so got this down!"

Said the person to fail making fruit roll ups.

Actually the mistake turned into something yummy and now I have an alternate to sugar candy, although I didn't mean it at all.

The recipe for making fruit roll ups or fruit leather is super easy, so of course I botch it- in the material and the cook time.

The material: I saw that the recipe is to basically puree some fruit and pour the puree onto a food dehydrator tray or baking sheet ( if using the oven) lined with parchment paper. I had parchment /baking paper and food dehydrator- and I thought I already had fruit puree - in the form of a crap-ton of home made freezer jam I made back during berry season in June. So I thawed out two jam jars, spread the jam in a sort-of thin layer on the parchment paper on each tray in my food dehydrator.

The timing: The recipe called for 6 to 8 hours of drying at 170 to 200 degrees in the oven, and the highest my food dehydrator heats to is 160. So I set the timer for like, umm 10 hours. Yeah- that should work.

Two things-

1. Jam has sugar in it. Sugar does not dry malleable and flexible. It drys hard. Like a sucker.

2. 10 hours will bake the heck out of your jam.

Result- not fruit letter. Not fruit roll ups. BUT it did make wonderful sugar candy!

The bits broke into palm sized plates- and look, feel and taste like a sucker/and or sugar candy/rock candy. Who knew? So I broke the sharp edges off and bagged those babies and have shared this 'candy' with family and friends who say it tastes great! (Note to self for future gifts) So there you go- that's how you make home made sugar candy.

Not to be taken down by the easiest zero waste recipe thus far, I tried again. I purchased one of the last batches of strawberries from Ungar Farms at the Farmer's Market and my husband pureed that half flat. No added sugar.