Strawberry fruit leather recipe: perfect for lunchboxes

Making fruit leather will wow your kids. Half-term looms, and while my children love making simple cakes and squabbling over the spoon v bowl, the wizardry that goes with making fruit reappear as something completely different (rollable, windable and whipable) is second-to-none. It's so simple, I shudder at my countless emergency snack purchases of those cleverly merchandised, Day-Glo packaged versions. You know the ones: two rolls, come with a collector card and a great big roaring furry bear on the front.

With punnets of strawberries coming thick, fast and cheap, I recommend having a go at this strawberry leather. Once you've nailed the method, you can experiment with just about any seasonal fruit (apricots, plums, blueberries …) Add apples to the mix to help with the set and reduce the cost.

As recipes go, it'll set you in good stead. Anyone with a packed lunch to make of a morning will know that feeling of hurling a sandwich from 10 paces while shaking some cereal into a bowl and ransacking various cupboards for something, anything, as a treat to accompany that lonesome sarnie and speckled banana. I'm a chef, so I can't quite quash the need to have made something from scratch, be it a flapjack, breadsticks, tiny semolina biscuits, popcorn. But the favourite snack for my three and six-year-olds is, without a doubt, a roll of fruit leather: "Like the ones in the shop, Mum."

I had an inkling it wouldn't be terribly difficult to replicate these popular snacks, so we set about the task. The preparation is simple, and although the cooking itself takes 12 hours, that just helps to build up the small folks' anticipation – I left mine in overnight. Come morning, we peeled the sheet of dehydrated fruit and cut it into thin strips that we then rolled and wrapped in neat squares of greaseproof paper. Into the lunchbox they went, passing the "looks like shop-bought" playground test easily.

Strawberry leather

Makes about 18 finger-width strips/rolls.

300g apple (roughly two), peeled and cored
500g strawberries, stalks removed
1 tsp cooking oil

Preheat the oven to 50C.

Put the fruit in a pan with a lid and cook over a medium heat for about 10 minutes, until completely soft. When cooled, push the pulp through a sieve.

Line a baking tray, around 35cmx30cm, with very lightly oiled greaseproof paper. Pour the pulp on to the baking sheet so that it reaches a thickness of about ½cm.

Put in the oven for about 12 hours. It should feel leathery and dry to touch.

Peel off the paper and cut into whatever shapes you like. Store in an airtight container.