Fruit Leather

Today I decided to try making fruit leather. I don't actually like fruit leather, but my husband thinks it's awesome. He was purchasing it regularly for a while, but then the novelty wore off and the stores stopped putting it in high-traffic areas. I think he pretty much forgot about it's existence, which I thought was great because the crap is expensive and I don't understand the draw. Anyway, I ran across a recipe on Pinterest a while ago, and it sounded insanely easy to make. We just went strawberry picking yesterday and came home with 18 lbs of strawberries, so it sounded like a good day to try it out. I looked up the recipe on Pinterest again, and also found a few recipes for fruit leather on the cooking apps on my phone. Everybody listed different amounts and different fruits, but the gist was the same: Puree whatever fruit you want, add a splash of lemon juice and enough sugar to make it taste good. Spread the mixture on a baking sheet covered in Saran Wrap. Dehydrate.

I put strawberries in my blender until it was pretty much full and included 3 apples that have been sitting in my fridge since God-knows-when. I added some lemon juice and spooned in a random amount of sugar, tasted it and added more. I ended up with about 6 1/2 C of pureed fruit and I think I put about 6 Tbsp of sugar in it. That was the easy part. I was a bit concerned about putting Saran Wrap in the oven, but every recipe I found said to do it, so I lined my cookie sheet. Did the Saran Wrap have to go up the sides? Would the puree get more liquid when it was heated and end up getting under the Saran Wrap? How big of a problem would that be? What was the point of the Saran Wrap anyway?

Sadly, my questions were the wrong ones. No, the Saran wrap does not have to go up the sides, in fact it's probably better if it doesn't. No, the puree never got more liquid. I doubt it would have been much of a problem if it had. I still don't know the point of the Saran Wrap. But the question I didn't ask - should I secure the Saran Wrap with anything? - YES, Tape. Once you put the puree on and start spreading it around, the sides of the Saran Wrap start trying to fold over. Quickly. And they don't stop or take turns. You need to tape that sucker down in several places on each side before you put the fruit on it.

I found three ways to dehydrate the leather. The most obvious was a food dehydrator with solid trays. Since I already told you I put it on cookie sheets, you've probably figured out that I don't have one of those. The second was in the oven with the door cracked for 6-8 hours at 150 or 170 or the lowest setting on your oven, depending on who wrote the recipe. The third was in your car with the windows cracked. Now I live in the middle of nowhere in Florida, so I figured the car idea sounded great. No electricity used, my oven would be available if I wanted to make something else, and hey, it's Florida, of course it's hot enough! No. The sun didn't come out today. It only got to about 80 degrees outside, and not much hotter than that in the car. I took one of my cookie sheets out and left it in the car for a few hours figuring that it was still morning and it would heat up later in the day. The second cookie sheet didn't have anywhere flat to sit so I put it in the oven and turned it to 200 degrees. My oven goes down to 170, but I've dried a lot of things at 200 and I'm not a patient person. Besides, I don't like running air conditioning with the oven cracked open. I checked in two hours, and it looked exactly the same. And the oven was cold. I don't know what happened, but it didn't make me smile. So I turned the oven on again to 200 and ended up baking it for 4 hours. I got my tray out of the barely warm car around 1:30 in the afternoon and put it in the oven too. I baked that one for about 4 1/2 hours.

In the end it tasted good (if you like that sort of thing), but the edges got crispy before the middles were done. Maybe that's because I was bad and baked them at 200. Maybe not. Either way, I don't suggest baking Saran Wrap at 200 degrees. For the most part, it did fine. However, Some the the edges got holes melted in them, even in areas where it was covered with fruit puree. I threw away all of the fruit puree that came in contact with melted Saran Wrap, but next time I think I will make this without the Saran Wrap. The fruit leather peels off of the Saran Wrap easily enough that I don't think I will have trouble removing it from my cookie sheets either. And next time, I will make sure it's sunny before I start throwing stuff in the blender :-)