Easy Fruit Leather Recipe
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Category: |
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Ingredients: |
Ingredients: 2 cups fresh fruit (cleaned, pitted, peeled, etc.)
2-3 TBS honey (raw and local, if possible)
Several drops of lemon juice
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Directions: |
Directions:
Puree your fruit in a blender until well processed. If you like, you can remove the seeds from fruits like blackberries by pressing the puree through a sieve with a spoon or running it through a food mill. We left our seeds and liked the crunch and extra fiber. Stir in your honey and lemon juice. You can adjust the measurements to suit the sweetness of your fruit. Line your sheet pan with parchment paper and pour the puree in to about an 1/8 inch thickness.
Dry according to preference.
Options for drying include:
The original recipe calls for cooking it in an oven at 200 degrees for approximately 2 hours. I found that our fruit leather needed easily twice this amount of time. Our raspberry/blackberry mixture needed about 4 hours and our strawberry fruit leather slightly more. In light of this, I went looking for more energy efficient means of drying it.
Other recipes call for setting the oven to 140 and leaving it overnight. This can cause it to become too dry and crack if you're not careful, and obviously there's still a fair amount of energy usage again.
Use a food dehydrator
You can try the "hot car method," which is widely recommended. Put the fruit leather in the back window of a south facing car on a sunny day. It should take about an afternoon.
Dry your leather outside. Simply cover with a window screen or cheesecloth (tented) and leave in a sunny location where it will be undisturbed.
Dry it outside in a solar cooker or even under a garden cold frame (a glass cover meant to protect plants from frost).
The fruit leather is ready when it is just slightly sticky to the touch. When it's ready, it will easily pull off the parchment paper. Cut it and roll it up. You can also simply cut it into rectangles to serve. Store it in the refrigerator (a glass jar would be perfect) if you're not planning on eating it within the day.
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