How to Make Healthy Homemade Fruit Snacks from Scratch

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Fruit snacks are one of my kids favourite treats, and being able to make my own from scratch with fresh fruit and veggies makes me feel like Supermom! These homemade fruit snacks are naturally sweetened with honey, coloured with nutritious vegetables and a lot of fun to make. Feel good about reducing your single-serve packaging and treat your kids to something deliciously healthy at snack time!

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Why I Wanted to Make Fruit Snacks from Scratch

My head is always full of big ideas about how I can do things differently. More healthy home cooking, more exercise, more activities with the kids. Good intentions can be overwhelming and recently I had a good think about what I would like to prioritize. Since back-to-school started I’ve realized just how many snacks we’re getting through. Between my three kids, my snackaholic husband and my plentiful tea breaks we are ploughing through a mountain of granola bars, fruit snacks, applesauce pouches and more.

I decided to make this expensive stash my priority for change. I have two solid reasons for prioritizing homemade snacks:

Reducing Waste at Home

Every Monday morning I take a trip to Target and stock up on snacks and household items. When I get home I stock my pantry with single-serve packets, emptied from cardboard boxes. The weekly waste created by individual bars and packets of fruit snacks is considerable and I decided I wanted to do something about it. I invested in some gummy molds and a set of silicon reusable snack bags. The latter I’ve been meaning to do for too long, I love Ziploc bags but we’re all aware of the issues with single use plastic. I’m no saint, and will often opt for convenience, but small changes make big changes in the long term.

I also love finding new uses for the pint sized wide mouth jars and reusable lids I bought years ago for the Twins homemade baby food. I have a big stash of them from three years ago and use them whenever I can! They are just as good as the day I bought them. Hooray for reducing waste.

Fresh Fruit & Veggie Goodness

When you make your own food you know exactly what goes into it. My kids were really excited at the idea of homemade fruit snacks, and they gobbled them up as soon as they were ready! The hidden raw veggies are a total win and knowing they are naturally sweetened with raw honey and fresh fruits makes them the perfect feel-good snack.

The quantities shown below created around 400 homemade fruit snacks. I’d say that’s around 20 portions, depending on the age of the kids/adults eating them. The recipe calls for 1 cup of fruit and 1/4 cup of veggies, this should result in two rounds for each mold tray. The molds I have are a set of four, each making 46 gummies. Unfortunately, I can no longer find these exact molds but these gummy bear molds are super cute!

Healthy Fruit Snacks Recipe

You can use any fruit and veggie combination you like, although avoid pineapple as the natural enzymes will stop your gummies setting. I used fresh apple and fresh veggies but opted for frozen peaches and berries. Frozen fruits are great value for money and good all year round. I am also going to try freezing the rest of my beets while they are in season.

Hopefully, I can build a stash of fruit and veggies that are ready to go for a new batch of fruit snacks whenever I want them. Using my freezer more is another way I am trying to reduce waste (and cost) at home.

Helpful Kitchen Items for Making Homemade Fruit Snacks

If you don’t have a set of molds, you can set your mix in a tray and cut into cubes. But I will say that the little shapes made homemade healthy fruit snacks easy to sell to my kids! I would also recommend using a blender that can blast fruit to a fine smooth puree. I use a bullet blender which quickly creates a smooth puree, a hand blender may have the same effect but a large food processor will likely not.

Here’s some links to kitchen kit I use which may be useful to you:

• Bullet Blender
• Silicone Fruit Snack Molds
• Glass Jars and Reusable Lids
• Silicone Reusable Snack Storage Bags
• Gelatin. You’re going to be using a lot and it’s cheaper online! If you’re looking for a pasture-raised, non GMO option without the individual sachets try Vital Pastures Beef Collagen. High quality gelatin gives the gummies a protein boost, and it’s great for hair skin and joints too!

Homemade Fruit Snack Short Cut

Making homemade fruit snacks is extremely satisfying and fun, but it is a little time-consuming. The process is simple, but making four different flavors with one set of molds requires multiple rounds of repeat activity. If you are short for time, buy a frozen bag of mixed fruit and veg, and make a single batch of the mixture to pour into all four molds. Yes, they’ll all be the same color, but they’ll still be delicious. The frozen fruit section in the grocery store has loads of ready to go smoothie blends which would work perfectly for healthy fruit snacks!

Homemade Fruit Snack Flavors:

These delicious nutritious snacks are full of goodness and are gluten-free too. The fruit snack colors/flavors shown in my pictures here were made with the following fruit/veggies blends:

Green Apple

• 1 cup peeled and chopped apple
• ¼ cup fresh spinach

Strawberry

• 1 cup frozen strawberries
• ¼ cup fresh chopped beets

Blueberry

• 1 cup frozen blueberries
• ¼ cup fresh chopped beets

Peach

• 1 cup frozen peach slices
• ¼ cup fresh chopped carrot

I hope you enjoy making these healthy homemade fruit snacks as much as I do. Let me know which flavor your kids like the best!

And if you’re looking for some fun savory snacks the kids will love, try my mini muffin pan snacks recipes.