Fig Fruit Leather (Dehydrator Not Required)

Fruit leather dehydrator not required. It’s true. When you make fig fruit jerky, it might just become part of your weekly meal prep for an easy DIY snack.

Which Kinds of Figs for Fruit Jerky

What we think you will most appreciate about this easy DIY fruit leather is how with a few simple tweaks you can make it your own. Start with Orchard Choice or Sun-Maid California Dried Figs—either Mission Dried Figs or Golden Dried Figs are great. Both make the fruit roll-up unFIGettable. Golden Dried Figs offer a milder nutty sweetness where Mission Dried Figs bring a more intense, deep sweetness. You can’t go wrong.

Customize Fruit Roll-Ups

Something else to try out is to swap in orange zest or lime zest, but you’ll want to keep the lemon juice in the recipe to balance out the sweetness.

Add whole spices to the cooking liquid to give it an extra boost of flavor. Try star anise, cinnamon sticks, cloves, a vanilla bean, cardamom pods or even peppercorns. Whatever you add, fish it out before pulverizing cooked fruit.

When is Fruit Leather Done

What you are looking for is a tacky feel—not completely dry but not wet either. We find that cooking the fruit jerky at 170F for about an hour and a half is just right. What you’re looking for is a fruit jerky that when completely cooled gets cut into long strips and when rolled up adheres to the parchment underneath.

Fruit Leather Dehydrator Optional

You can certainly make fruit leather in a dehydrator, but it’s really optional. You can buy fruit leather inserts for dehydrators that are round and in which you spread out the fruit puree as above, but not everyone has a dehydrator. Instead, turn your oven onto its lowest setting of 170F and you can dry the fruit puree out that way. The high pectin in dried figs and also in the lemon zest help the fruit jerky gel.

How to Store Fruit Leather

Store cooled fruit leather rolled up strips in a sealed container for a week—if it lasts that long!