Need to figure out seedless cranberries

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clazar123 on 4 Nov 2025 at 04:57

Think raisins.

I know it sounds weird but I want to figure out how to add pieces of bright red cranberries to my baking that have no seeds (an issue of them causing stomach issues.) I might want to extend whatever I figure out to blueberries, as well. 

My thoughts: 

Perhaps I can cook and run the cranberries through a fine mill to remove the seeds. I do this when I make seedless raspberry jam. I can then take the fruit puree, make a thick jam and then dehydrate it to make a soft fruit leather which I cut up into bits. I believe it would retain its relatively bright red color. I would prefer not to add sugar but may need to in order for it to gel properly.  It sounds involved (and is) but it would yield a goodly amount per batch. I can't think of any other way to do it or any other product that would do it. 

Easy version would be to take jellied cranberry sauce in the can, dehydrate that and cut up into bits. My only reservation is that canned cranberry sauce is not bright red and I am looking for that pop of color. 

Has anybody ever done this before? OR is there a seedless version of dried cranberries/blueberries out there. I haven't been able to find them.

First, I had no idea there were seeds in cranberries. It makes sense but I never noticed.

Second, what about converting cranberry jelly into gummies? Gemini says:

To convert pre-made jelly to gummies, you will need to remelt the jelly and add additional unflavored gelatin to achieve a firmer, chewier consistency. 

Instructions

Ingredients & Supplies:

  • Existing jelly
  • Unflavored gelatin powder (start with a ratio of about 1 tablespoon per 1/2 cup of jelly)
  • Small saucepan
  • Silicone gummy molds (a dropper or syringe helps with filling)
  • Small amount of neutral oil or cooking spray (optional, for molds)
  • Cornstarch (optional, for coating) 

Steps:

  1. Prepare the Mixture: Place the jelly in a small saucepan. Add the unflavored gelatin powder. Do not apply heat yet. Whisk the mixture well to combine everything and allow the gelatin to "bloom" (absorb the liquid and thicken) for about 5-10 minutes.
  2. Heat Gently: Place the saucepan over low to medium-low heat. Stir continuously until the jelly and all the gelatin are completely dissolved and the mixture is smooth. Do not boil, as high heat can affect the final texture. The mixture should be syrupy.
  3. Fill Molds: Remove the pan from the heat. If using molds, lightly grease them with a little oil and wipe out any excess. Use a dropper or syringe to carefully fill your silicone molds with the warm liquid mixture.
  4. Chill and Set: Place the filled molds in the refrigerator to chill until the gummies are firm and fully set. This typically takes about 15-30 minutes, depending on the size of the molds.
  5. Remove from Molds: Once set, gently pop the gummies out of the molds by pushing from the bottom.
  6. Store: If the gummies are a little sticky, you can lightly toss them in a bowl with a small amount of cornstarch to coat them. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator, where they can last for 1-2 weeks. 

For an even chewier texture, you can let the finished gummies air-dry at room temperature for 1-3 days on a lined plate or baking sheet, rotating them once a day. 

Making a gummy using the gelatin is a good idea. Might be easier.

Yeah, the seeds are small but definitely there. My system knows, unfortunately. The same with seeds in my favorite blueberries and sesame seeds...and poppy seeds...and chia,etc,etc.

My red currant jelly is that same scarlet color when I make it. Beautiful!! One of the reasons I love it-appeals to my visual delight swirled in yogurt or on a biscuit.

Thanks!

I think the gelatin would work as long as I made them chewy enough but I do like the thought of dehydrating the fruit puree (like a fruit leather). I can control the amount of sugar and just dice into raisin sized bits.

One place I found said keeping the bright red color was a matter of keeping the temperature low. I don't know if that is the key but looking at what is available, a bright red color is possible. 

I'd love to hear how it works.

Gary

King Arthur sells Blueberry (and other) Jammy Bits for baking and they use pectin to thicken the purée. That might give a less rubbery product than gelatin. KA also claims that the bits won't melt in baking, but I don't know if the pectin is reason for that.

I suppose dried cherries aren't a good substitute?

I will definitely look into the KA jammy bits. Thank you! (EDIT: no bright red bits but the others look good. Looks like I will be doing homemade cranberry or possibly red currant jelly jammy bits)

Cherries taste good but I have used them and they are very dark color-almost black. I am looking for the brighter red that cranberries naturally have. Candied cherries are way too artificial. 

I think making fruit leather and cutting it into small pieces is a good idea. I add small pieces of homemade fruit leather to granola when I make it. You don't need to make a jam first to make fruit leather. Just gently cook the fruit with a bit of water, puree and strain it, add honey or corn syrup, and spread it out on lined trays, then put them in your dehydrator or a very low temperature oven with the door cracked open. Once the leather's dry, you can snip off bits with scissors or use a pizza roller to cut it into small pieces. You don't need to add the sweeteners, but they do help to keep the leather flexible and somewhat to preserve the colour. I never care about the colour of the fruit leather I make, but since you do, I'd also add lemon juice or crushed up vitamin C pills. They prevent the oxidation that turns fruit brown.

However, dehydrating the cranberries will change their colour regardless. I've never seen dehydrated cranberries that are very bright. Even Ocean Spray's craisins are fairly dark. You might have better luck with red currants, as you've suggested. Their seeds are also bigger and likely easier to remove by pressing through a sieve than those of cranberries. You might need to experiment with different fruits until you find ones that you still like the look of once they're dehydrated. I'd also recommend mixing different fruits. Apples make, in my opinion, the best textured fruit leather, and since they are naturally light, they take on the colour of the other fruit  or juice you cook them with.

Good luck!

 

Edit: 20251106_124404

I went to my cold room to see if I had any homemade bright red fruit leather. These were the brightest reds of any dehydrated things I have. Mind you, I do not make any attempt to preserve colour when dehydrating. The leather on the left is a mixture of crabapples and raspberries with honey. The leather on the right is just crabpples and honey. The dehydrated crabapple pieces on the left are plain, and the ones on the right were soaked in sugar water before drying. Both sets of dried crabapple pieces were made in the fall of 2023, so still pretty bright and red for being two years old! The leathers are from the fall of 2024, so they're over a year old, too. My photography skills suck. The leather with raspberries, in real life, is noticeably brighter than the plain crabapple one, and the sweetened crabapple pieces are noticeably brighter than the plain ones.

 

 

Interesting response and great pictures. I have made fruit leathers (years ago) but never paid attention to maintaining a color and they were mainly applesauce and whatever other fruit was at hand and blenderized. I never added extra sugar, and I used a dehydrator. I think I'm going shopping in the jam/jelly shelf at the store and see what looks bright red (currant jelly? seedless raspberry?) to use. Mixing a jelly with a little applesauce might give them a bit more body. Dehydrate and cut into bits.

Thank you!

I didn't mean to drop out so long but I was able to make a product that survived baking in my biscotti, was red and had a sweet/tart cranberry flavor but no seeds. They had a little more chew than I wanted but I believe that was more from the shape (small, 3x3mmsquares that were 2 mm thick) than the consistency. A thicker product might have been the correct consistency. Unfortunately, the process was so fraught with troubleshooting and additions as I worked within the same batch that I cannot say with any reasonable accuracy what caused the product to turn out as it did except persistence and a bunch of ingredients that could have worked.

I started out by cooking fresh cranberries with sugar just enough to make them pop and release their gel and then hand sieving through a fine enough mesh to catch the seeds. Like making jam. That took a while and if I was going to do this on a regular basis I would obtain a berry mill. 

The first step was to dry them in my food dehydrator like a fruit leather. I poured several different thicknesses. Sounds easy and I could get the dehydrated thin pour to dry enough to handle but it was so hydrophilic that just sitting for an hour, the surface would get sticky. Also, it was too leathery. But the piece I made thicker was not dry enough to handle or cut into pieces. Back to the drawing board but I was not about to waste the product I had.

It all went back into a pot  with water and gelatin (high proportion) and dissolved. I repoured onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and allowed it to set up. Still very sticky-I was looking for gummy. Tried drying in a light-bulb warmed oven overnight. Still very sticky and fragile. Back into a pot, redissolved and added xanthan gum. Poured onto parchment-lined cookie sheet again. Set overnight. Failure. Dried in oven overnight. Hmm..... headed in the right direction. Dried 2 more days. Dry-cut into little squares, chewy/tacky. I thought I was done. HA! I tossed the little squares with powdered sugar and put them in a jar. A few hours later, I could see spots of moisture. Back onto the cookie sheets and back into the slightly warmed oven-for 2 more days! "Cooled" and back in the jar-tossed with a little cornstarch as well as powdered sugar. Success! No moisture formation! 

I baked with them a few days later and still have the leftovers in a jar. So jammy bits can be made.....somehow! THis needs a lot more work to develop. I did consult gummy recipes but most did not use fresh fruit as the base. 

 Next time I might order from King Arthur!

It really sounds to me like you just weren't dehydrating your fruit for long enough. I bet just adding a bit of cornstarch to the mixture to help stop it being too leathery, and just dehydrating it for longer, would have worked. You don't say how long you dried it for or what temperature you used, but if it's still wet, you can just keep drying it. Depending on the thickness, my leathers can take two days or more to dry. I don't know if your thin leather was really attracting moisture from the air as you say. I think it's more likely it was just still wet on the inside and the moisture was seeping through. I get my leathers dry enough that they are still edible after several years. They do sometimes soften up a bit seemingly from taking in moisture from the air, but that takes months, not hours.

Certainly worth an investigation there. I once ordered Ultra-Stik from them, to keep the toppings on bagels. (It worked better than nothing, but not as well as I had hoped.)