Foraged Fruit Leather Recipe

/ 2 days ago October 13, 2026

Fruit leathers are an excellent way to preserve the abundance and variety of autumn fruit without adding much additional sugar, or any at all. Despite the ‘lack’ of added sugar, you can still use up the more bitter and astringent fruits by mixing them with sweeter fruits. The dehydration concentrates the natural sugars of all the fruits making a tasty and nutritious snack.

The recipe is simple: combine whole berries with around 50% of total volume of apples. I do this to balance the flavours of the stronger berries and to be more efficient in producing a decent amount. However, the recipe will still work without apples, you just need more bulk from the flesh of the berries. Any type of apple will do. I used mostly foraged crab apples with a few sweeter eating apples from my dad’s garden.

For this recipe I used a combination of whitebeam, hawthorn and rowan berries. The rowan berries definitely made it taste a bit bitter, I used about 20% rowan – use less if you are not a fan of the flavour.

Other wild fruits that you can add to the mix include: sloes, plums, damsons, cherries, bilberries, blackberries, raspberries, redcurrants, elderberries, sea buckthorn, pears, medlars – the list goes on.

If using rosehips make sure to cook them separately and strain through muslin first to remove the irritating hairs.

I only sliced the apples, the other berries were just rinsed and added to the pan. The left over fruit pulp can be boiled again to add to hedgerow jelly mixes.

Recipe

  • Combine all fruits in large pan. Add a splash of water, around 150ml. Simmer gently.
  • Add more water if bottom is drying out, but careful not to add to much – the point is to concentrate the flesh of the fruits through dehydration.
  • Once all the fruit is soft and squishy mash with a potato masher.
  • Then force the mixture through a strong sieve with the back of a large spoon. This step requires a lot of work.
  • Spread the mixture out onto baking trays.
  • Dehydrate in a dehydrator, or on the lowest setting (around 50c) in the oven with the door open for 2-4hrs.
  • Slice, sprinkle over caster sugar, then roll and store in the fridge for 1-2 months.
  • Enjoy!
Sliced foraged fruit leather laid out on a wooden chopping board sprinkled with sugar. Laid with two apples, rowan berries and whitebeam berries with the leaves, and a few frozen then thawed hawthorn berries.
Collage of four photos with labels: Rowan, Crab apple, Whitebeam and Hawthorn.
Mixed foraged fruits in a pan in the sink.
Pan of fruit puree mashed next to bowl with a sieve balanced on top for pushing through the puree. Both on a wooden board on a table with the foraged fruits and a book about trees.
Fruit puree spread out on greaseproof paper with a metal spoon. Close up photo. Orange red in colour.
Collage of two photos. One showing the dehydrated fruit puree after removing from the oven laid out on a wooden chopping board. The other showing the foraged fruit leather cut into strips on a wooden chopping board with a pizza cutter. Labelled with text 'dehydrated' and 'sliced'.
Sliced foraged fruit leather laid out on a wooden chopping board sprinkled with sugar. Laid with two apples, rowan berries and whitebeam berries with the leaves, and a few frozen then thawed hawthorn berries. Text caption on image "Sprinkle over caster sugar"
Foraged fruit leather rolled up for storage in a tupperware on greaseproof paper. Next to to the un-rolled fruit leather sliced into strips. Text on image: Roll, store in fridge, enjoy!
Collage of photo of the foraged fruit puree overlaid on a photo of a close up of hawthorn, whitebeam and rowan berries.

Related posts

Leave a Reply