Homemade Fruit Snacks
You only need a few simple ingredients to make delicious homemade fruit snacks that both kids and adults will love!
Please tell me I’m not the only grown up who loves fruit snacks? Sometimes I buy fruit snacks and hide them from my kids so I can eat them all. (It’s true.)
So I thought it would be fun to make fruit snacks at home with real fruit and no strange ingredient list. These homemade fruit snacks require just 5 ingredients and 10 minutes of work, and are both kid and mama approved! I made a variety of strawberry, peach, and cherry-berry fruit snacks but you can make almost any kind you’d like.
Testing homemade fruit snack recipes
I have made so many batches of fruit snacks over the last few weeks! I tried recipes I found online to get a baseline for what I wanted to do and didn’t like a single one. They were bland and boring and none of them came close to something my kids or I would enjoy as a snack. I get that many recipe developers are aiming for something healthy and wholesome, but for me fruit snacks should always be quite sweet and flavorful. They’re basically just a step away from candy.
After lots of trial and error I landed on a completely original recipe that I am very excited about. These fruit snacks are so good! They are sweet, fruity and addicting. Plus, these fruit snacks are made with real fruit and contain none of the additives you’d find in a store-bought variety.
Fruit Snack Ingredients
Fruit snacks are essentially a combination of fruit, sweetener, and gelatin— so simple! Here’s exactly what you’ll need:
- Fresh or frozen fruit— You can use almost any fruit, like strawberries, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, etc. Stay away from fruits like pineapple, mango or kiwi, as they have an enzyme that breaks down gelatin.
- White grape juice or apple juice— Juice adds more sweetness but you want one with neutral flavor. If you’d prefer, you can also use water.
- Granulated sugar— To get homemade fruit snacks that taste like ones from the store, you have to use granulated sugar! Honey or maple syrup are an option, but in my opinion they add too much of their own flavor to the fruit snacks.
- Powdered gelatin— Gelatin is what gets the fruit snacks nice and firm. You can find it at any major grocery store next to the Jell-O packets.
- Fresh lemon juice— This is an optional addition, but I like how the lemon juice adds a brightness to the flavor of the fruit snacks.
How do you make homemade fruit snacks?
It’s really quite easy! Just follow these steps:
- Read through the recipe and have everything ready to go. Gelatin will solidify as soon as it starts to cool, so prepping everything ahead of time ensures success.
- Blend fresh fruit with juice using a high powdered blender or food processor. Strain to remove seeds, if you’d like.
- Heat fruit purée with sugar and gelatin. Add the gelatin slowly while whisking to avoid clumping, and do not let the mixture boil. When the mixture is completely smooth and the gelatin has dissolved completely, it’s ready.
- Pour the mixture into a bread pan lined with parchment or wax paper and chill in the fridge for 1 hour until firm.
- Peel the fruit snacks from the paper and slice with a sharp knife. Then, enjoy!
Additional tips
- The recipe below makes about 2 cups of fruit snacks. Make additional batches, each one with a different fruit, for a variety.
- You can use candy molds to shape your fruit snacks if you’d like. Lightly grease with nonstick spray and then wipe away excess with a paper towel before filling and they should pop right out once firm. Consider also using a candy dropper to fill molds.
- Fruit snacks will keep stored in an airtight container at room temperature for 1-2 days or in the fridge for up to 5 days.
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Homemade Fruit Snacks
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups fruit , thawed if frozen (see Notes)
- 1/2 cup white grape juice or apple juice
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 3 tablespoons powdered gelatin
Instructions
- Combine fresh fruit, white grape juice, and lemon juice in blender. Blend on high until smooth. If desired, pass through a mesh strainer to remove seeds.
- Pour puréed fruit into a saucepan and set over medium heat. Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
- Add gelatin slowly while whisking. If added too quickly, gelatin will clump.
- Continue to whisk until mixture is smooth and gelatin has dissolved. Do not let mixture boil.
- Remove from heat. Line a 9x5-inch bread pan with parchment or wax paper and pour mixture in.
- Chill in the fridge for one hour until firm. Remove from the pan and cut with a sharp knife.
- Store fruit snacks at room temperature for up to 2 days or in the fridge for up to 5 days.
Notes
- You can use almost any kind of fruit for these fruit snacks, but pineapple, kiwi, mango, ginger root, papaya, figs or guava should not be used. These fruits contain enzymes that break down the proteins in gelatin and will not firm up.
- Yields 2 cups of fruit snacks.
This looks so yummy and great recipe for summer
I followed the recipe to the letter and it came out great!
thank you so much for making this im skipping my ecnomecs fair it happpens in second grade so we haft to sell stuff my teacher said
This recipe didn’t work. it was fun to do but it didn’t set very well
Great
Mine didn’t work. They’re still very Jello-y. Not sure if I cooked for too short or too long.
Turned out great!! I used honey instead sugar. I made them for the grandkids but my husband is eating fruit snacks for the first time ever!!
What was the conversion of honey to sugar? 1:1?
I make these all of the time; we love them! I set out frozen berries in the morning and then make them after lunch. I substitute honey for the sugar. A very easy, tasty recipe. Thank you!
How can I make this vegan? What can I use instead of gelatin? They sound wonderful!
You can try using fruit pectin instead of gelatin, but you’ll have to do some experimentation because they aren’t 1 to 1.
I used not quite 4 envelopes of Knox gelatin and a mixtures of frozen (thawed) berries and it set well. Not super sweet, but that is the point of making your own, right?
this snake is healthy, thank you for this recipe, my child really likes it