Strawberry Leather or the Healthy Version of Gummy Candy

This is going to be a very red post, full of strawberries. Strawberry leather… have you heard about it before? This is actually fruit leather and you can make it from juicy apricot or peach (I will definitely try from these stone fruits too!). This leather thing is exciting not only for children, for adults too. It’s very easy to make but it takes a few hours. Anyway, you will be amazed with the result so don’t miss it!

Last year I found a couple of fruit leather recipes online but somehow I’ve never made them. This year when the Hungarian strawberry season started I was the first one at the market to buy a batch and try to make these yum gummy candies.

Why should we make our gummy candies? The traditional gummy candy (bear) is made from a mixture of sugar (a lot!!!), glucose syrup, starch, flavouring, food colouring, preservative, citric acid, and gelatin (derived from the collagen mainly inside pig skin (hide) and cattle bones!!!). I think that’s enough reason to convince myself to make my homemade version as healthy as possible. We can say that gummy candy is only a plastic chemical product. Remember this next time when you stand at the cash desk and all the colourful candies will tempt you to buy them.

Raw food diet followers make fruit leather in food dehydratator. I don’t own one so I baked my version in the oven at the lowest temperature. Ingredients are only strawberry, honey and vanilla. Do you also think it’s a healthy gummy candy?

Strawberry Leather

Ingredients

- 5 cups strawberry (about 600-700 g)
- 3 tablespoons honey (you can use maple syrup or rice syrup too)
- 1 vanilla bean, split and seeded

Method

Hull and half the washed strawberries. Place them in a pan and cook on low heat for about 12-15 minutes. Turn off the heat, add honey and vanilla. Pureé it with a hand blender. Pour the strawberry mixture on to a baking sheet (38*35 cm / 14,96*13,77 inch) covered with parchment paper.

Put in the oven and bake (dry) at 50C (122F) – this is my lowest temperature in my oven – for about 6-8 hours. Leave the oven door a bit open to let the moist out.

First time when I took the sheet out of the oven the leather was very firm so I put it back in the oven and I let  it cool there. The next morning the leather was softer and it was easy to peel off from the parchment paper.  Use a scissor to cut stripes and roll them up.

Strawberry leather on baking sheet…

Strawberry leather without baking sheet turned against the light…

Amazing experience – strawberry leather in my hands!

Fruit rolls…