How To Make Your Own Fruit Roll-Ups

Fruit snacks have it all — they're sweet and tart and chewy, and they remind you of childhood. In your younger years, everyday, you'd cross your fingers and pray that there would be that shiny silver Fruit Roll-Up package in your lunch box. If you weren't lucky enough to get one, you'd trade everything from your Dunkaroos to your GoGURT just to get a piece of your friend's. They were the Holy Grail of the lunch pail — and whoever tries to tell you that they're just for kids has obviously never tried a DIY Fruit Roll-Up recipe.

Fruit Roll-Ups, like most fruit snacks, are a variation of dried fruit leather. And like so many of your childhood favorites, you can make them yourself. In fact, you only need a few ingredients: fruit, sweetener, and additional spices or flavoring. Because there isn't much to it, you can easily customize the flavors by switching and combining different ingredients. Apples are the perfect base for just about every fruit leather, and can be combined with berries, peaches, apricots, plums, and pretty much any other fruit you can put your mind to. You can even add a little maturity and elegance to your favorite childhood snack by adding in different extracts, spices, or herbs. Mint, ginger, basil, vanilla, and cinnamon are all great options for spicing up the traditional. The options are limitless.

When it came time to create my own Fruit Roll-Ups, I picked three flavors — blueberry mint, honey and ginger peach, and raspberry apple — but you can easily adapt the the recipes below for your own personal preferences:

Ingredients

Raspberry Apple Fruit Roll-Ups

• 2 large apples, peeled and chopped
• 3 cups raspberries
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice

Honey Ginger Peach Roll-Ups

• 2 large apples, peeled and chopped
• 4 large peaches, scrubbed and chopped
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice
• 4 tbsp. ginger syrup

Blueberry Mint Fruit Roll-Ups

• 2 large apples, peeled and chopped
• 3 cups blueberries
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 tbsp. lemon juice
• 2 tbsp. chopped mint

Directions

1. Combine fruit, sweetener, and lemon juice in a blender. Mix until pureed. Strain to remove unwanted seeds or skins (optional).

2. In a medium sauce pan, heat mixture to a simmer over medium to medium high heat. Add in extracts, spices, herbs, or other flavorings.

3. Simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring constantly, until most of the liquid has boiled off. Be careful of splattering.

4. Spread the mixture evenly over a silicone baking sheet, about 1/8 inch thick throughout. (If you don't have a silicone baking sheet, try coating a baking sheet with coconut oil or using nonstick foil.)

5. Bake for three hours at 200 degrees, or until the fruit leather easily peels away from the pan in one sheet.

6. Cut into the desired size, and roll with parchment paper. Serve, or keep in an air tight container or plastic bag for up to two weeks.

The Verdict

Better than anything I've had out of a foil packet, these DIY Fruit Roll-Ups were bursting with flavor and satisfied my sweet and sour cravings — not to mention they looked great! My personal favorite was the blueberry mint fruit roll up, which offered an unexpected coolness that makes them perfect to bring along on a summer picnic or a hike. These fun fruit strips are already marked as a recipe to repeat.

Images: Sadie Trombetta