Fool Proof Fruit Leather

We're coming up on our second year of fruit tree harvest in the next couple of months.  It has me reflecting on all of our fruit preservation techniques we tried last year.  By far one of our favorites was fruit leather...for everything.  Plums, Cherries, Peaches, you name it.  I made some mistakes and learned loads last season (it was pour first year ever doing any type of preservation) and I'm excited for this year.  We tried a lot of different recipes and ways of canning and preserving but we've decided that jams, fruit leather, and freezing are going to be our go to's for this year. This post is all about fruit leather so here ya go:

Things that help making fruit leather:

• Use a dehydrator.  The oven takes too long and warms up your home.  If you're going to be making fruit leather often purchase a dehydrator, it's worth it.
• Use the smooth flat fruit leather trays provided with your dehydrator (or buy some if you don't have any.  No need to use parchment paper (I tried it cause I wanted the "fruit by the foot" feel and it just made things worse and messier and more waste), the smooth sheets work just fine.
• Dehydrate over night or while you'll be out of the house.  You can dehydrate during the day but my ADHD and mom brain is already over stimulated to the max that having something slightly noisy constantly all day was a challenge.  I much prefer to make it and start the dehydrator right before I go to bed and have it run all night and be done in the morning.  This obviously will depend on what you're dehydrating and the time.  You don't want to over dehydrate so make sure you either set an alarm or just do it during the day,
• You get to add whatever amount of sugar you'd like.  I ere on the side of less to no sugar but some fruit (read our green plums) are very tart and I needed to add some sugar to the batch.  You could also add other fruit to sweeten it up or a bit of apple juice.
• Mix apples with something.  My kids didn't like the texture of just plain apples in the fruit leather so this year I'm going to try and mix them with something else.

Fruit Leather Recipe

1. Prep any amount of fruit you want (1-100lbs doesn't matter).  Prepping ALWAYS includes a good clean and taking out pits or large seeds.  I keep the skin on for my fruit for fruit leather but you can remove it if you'd like.

2. Place fruit on a baking sheet or large baking pan in a single layer.  Bake at 400F for about 15 min or until soft.

3. Put softened HOT fruit into a food processor or blender  and puree until smooth.  *Be careful as fruit will be very hot

4.Give it a taste and add sugar or sweetener if needed. *Be careful as fruit will be very hot

5. Pour onto dehydrator sheets to desired thickness. *Be careful as fruit will be very hot

6. Dehydrate at 140F until fully dry (about 6-10 hours).  The thicker and thinner you pour your fruit leather will depend on your dry time.  I like ours on the thick side 😉 so we dehydrate around 8-10 hours.

7.  Once it's fully dry (you can touch with your finger and it feels tacky but your finger stays clean when you remove it.) Peel it off, fold or roll it and store it in bags.  We eat ours within a few weeks so I have no idea what long term storage would look like for us...maybe vacuum sealed?

Let me know what you think and how this recipe worked for you.

xoxo
​Camille