Homemade Fruit Roll-Up

One of my son's favorite go-to snacks is a "soo pawt." What is that, you may ask. Don't you speak toddler? Specifically my toddler? A "soo pawt" or as most people would call it a "fruit strip," is a sticky fruit roll-up that isn't so much rolled up as it is just a strip of sticky dried fruit (without additives). My son loves them. I recently discovered that I could be making these myself. WHAT?!?! How have I not thought of this sooner??? In order to do this, I had to scour the internet searching for fruit roll sheets for my food dehydrator. Unfortunately, the food dehydrator I have doesn't have fruit roll sheets even online. However, I found ones that fit it ok and ordered them, crossing my fingers just hoping they would work...and they did! WOOHOO!! As soon as I got them out of the packaging and washed them, I made my first batch of homemade fruit roll-ups. To see how to do this, check the link here.

Photo from Pinterest

This process was so easy and can be done without a dehydrator, but since I had one, I decided not to even try that route. My dehydrator is certainly a cheapie with only an on-off switch and no programable temp gauge and whatnot. But, it seemed to work just fine.

I decided to make peach-strawberry fruit roll-ups. Something about peaches and strawberries just seem right together recently, apparently. I mixed it in my fantastic Blendtec blender and then poured it into the fruit roll sheets on my dehydrator.

I made sure to distribute it as evenly as possible and I did use both of the fruit roll sheets, so it wasn't a single layer.

My observations: 1) Fabulously frugal's blog says this should take about 4 hours. My dehydrator ran through the afternoon and the night before the fruit strips were good to go. This probably wouldn't be the case if I had a fancy-schmancy dehydrator that I could control what the temp on it was, but it still worked fine, so I'm ok with that. 2) The top layer of fruit strip was more like fruit jerky. Very hard and chewy with a little bit of crunch. It still tasted alright, but it wasn't the right consistency. The bottom layer, however, was perfect. Chewy, no crunch and not hard. Very tasty. 3) To get it into "strips" I started out by trying to use a pizza cutter, but the fruit was just too hard, so I ripped the pieces apart, which seemed to work a whole lot better and was way quicker. That'd be my recommendation. 4) It doesn't look as appetizing as the picture from Pinterest, but it truly was rather tasty.

So now, the only problem is that my son isn't crazy about it. He's tried it, but unfortunately, having tried the fruit "jerky" top layer before the fruit "leather" bottom layer, he has decided he is not a fan. I and my husband, however, both have really enjoyed it. I think this is definitely a keeper recipe - and you can use whatever fruit you'd like. Next time, I think I will make it in the morning so I can watch it throughout the day and make sure it doesn't stay on too long - no more fruit jerky for this family! Otherwise, I really like this and I'm looking forward to trying it again!