Friday, April 8, 2011

Fruit Leather: The Experiment


I saw this recipe recently on Tasty Kitchen's blog and it finally decided to try fruit leather for myself.

My boys all love fruit leather.

I often buy it at Trader Joe's or at my local food store but it's expensive.

I like that fruit leather is just all fruit.

I know what's in it.

I like to know what's in my food. It's my latest obsession.



I started with 2 quarts of strawberries.  The recipe calls for one, but I double almost every recipe I make. I reason that if I'm going to bother with something, I might as well make twice as much.  It will get eaten.

Less brawling for the last piece.

I'm all about peace.



Slice up the berries into a sauce pan.





Get thee some lemons.

Squeeze em.


 Get thee some taste testers.

Never a problem at the this Chalet.



Is it sweet enough?

Add sweetener to taste.

Remember that the fruit leather will sweeten as it sits. And sits.



Give the strawberry concoction a whirl in the food processor or blender till smooth.

Pour it on greased parchment paper.



Place it in a 170 degree oven for many many hours.

And wait.

And wait.

And don't run to the store for last minute soccer cleats with your 11 year old son and not come home for 2 1/2 hours and scorch half of the fruit leather like I did.

Not cool.

Yeah. So not cool.

It must have been that 6-7 hour mark where I was supposed to flip the fruit leather onto another greased parchmented cookie sheet and brush it with water. I think the other problem is that my oven is a mite smaller than most so I'm stuck using a bit of a smaller cookie sheet.  I had a little extra puree on one cookie sheet that took a lot longer to dry out.  I'm going to have to play with this if I'm going to do it again.



But the stuff that turned out was good.  Really good.

Ya just gotta follow the directions.

I'm finding that I'm not the greatest direction follower.

That's why I like to cook with a handful of this and a dash of that.

Except in baking. As long as there aren't too many ingredients.  I like simple.



I cut the fruit leather with a pizza cutter and wrapped it up in little strips of wax paper.



It looked pretty.


It tasted good.  I'm still on the fence on whether it was worth the work.

You try it and decide.
(and don't leave the house like I did)
The Lunch Lady

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