Homemade Fruit Snacks

One of my toddler’s favorite snacks is fruit snacks, sadly, there is not much fruit in fruit snacks you purchase from the store.  Long sigh.  Homemade fruit snacks are a great alternative to store bought ones.  Instead of using sugar you can use actual fruit and instead of using more sugar you can sweeten your fruit snacks using a healthier alternative.  I will admit, I love sugar but I’m trying to start my daughter’s life out right by not introducing her to refined sugars so early on in life. There are many alternatives at places like Whole Foods and Sprouts but they can cost an arm and a leg!

These fruit snacks take about 5 minutes to prep and are super easy.  The trick is getting all of your ingredients ready to go before you start the process.  Make sure you know the steps before you begin so it goes smoothly.  I only say this because this recipe calls for gelatin and once you add gelatin you need to move fast!  Gelatin settles within 30 seconds.  Getting solid gelatin into molds is pretty difficult 😉 on the bright side you do NOT need fancy mold for this recipe. You can pour the fruit blend into a small bread/cake pan and place it in the fridge.  I’ll touch on this more in the instructions area!

What you need:

1. 1 ½ cups of pureed fruit (I used dark sweet pitted cherries and peaches from a can but you can use whatever seedless fruit you want)

2. 6 tablespoons of gelatin (I used one I bought from amazon a little pricey but it is organic and works like a charm)

3. ¼ cup of sweetener || Now this is up to you 🙂 The organic “no added sugar” way to go is using ¼ cup raw honey or ¼ cup pure maple syrup.  OR you are more than welcome to use ¼ cup of sugar. This will make it much sweeter.

**optional** 1 cup of fruit juice or Kombucha or added antioxidants

**optional** liquid vitamins to sneak is some vitamins for the toddlers

Here is what you do:

1. Puree your fruit in a blender

2. Add pureed fruit, your choice of sweetener, and juice (if you choose) into a sauce pan

3. Stir and warm but do not boil.  Right before you believe it is going to boil remove from heat

4. Here is where you need to move fast: once you have turned off the heat add your gelatin and whisk very quickly! Spend about 10 seconds whisking your mixture until it’s smoother and then add to your mold

TIP: I did not use a mold the first time I did this.  I simply poured my mixture in the bottom of a small cake (the rubber kind) pan and placed it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  When it was done I removed the cake pan and the fruit mold popped out.  Then I cut them into tiny little pieces.  The second time I did use cute little heart and banana shaped molds I found at the Japanese dollar store in San Diego because my daughter thought it was fun to eat tiny hearts 🙂

The molds or pans should either be sprayed with nonstick spray or they should be the silicon type of molds, pans, cake pan.  If you use a metal or glass pan it could be more difficult to remove and cut up, although I do this with jello often and never have an issue I would just hate for all your hard work to be wasted because of the wrong pan.

Jennifer shared a fantastic recipe with us last month for  Organic Scones that you won’t want to miss. These were so good!  Jennifer shares recipes and info on essential oils on her site Homemade Handbook.