When you look at an apple tree and see that it is loaded with fruit…it’s all so very pretty and exciting. So you begin to pick the apples and load your boxes…and it gets even more pretty and exciting. And then you go overboard because all of it is all so pretty and exciting that you just can’t stop picking.
And then, you go home with all of your apples, and someone else calls you on the phone and asks if you want some more apples. And you say, sure, because you just hate to turn away good (free) food. So then, you have even more apples.
And then someone else calls you (in the same day) and asks if you want some peaches. Like FOUR banana boxes full of peaches. And you get really excited (forgetting briefly about all of the apples) and say, yes, you’d love to have all those peaches. (And then you share some of the peaches because really, four banana boxes full? Have you seen a banana box?)
And then you get started in your kitchen making applesauce and canning and freezing peaches…and you keep working until everything, including your children, begin to look like either an apple or a peach. Sad, but true.
You decide that you’re kind of tired of doing the very same things with your fruit, so you try to make some fruit leather. And it works, and it’s yummy. Everything and everyone around you still looks like an apple or a peach…but at least now, you have another kind of snack stored away in your pantry for the winter. Hooray!
Here’s what you would do…
Apple Fruit Leather
1. Make applesauce as shown here.
2. Put a piece of buttered parchment paper on a cookie sheet and spread the applesauce about 1/8 inch thickness on the cookie sheet.
3. Put it into a 170 degree oven for somewhere between 10-18 hours or longer, depending on your oven. Your fruit leather will be done with it is no longer wet….just sticky and leathery.
You can add some kind of sweetener to it or maybe some cinnamon or nutmeg if you’d like…I just left mine plain and it is sweet and yummy as can be!
Peach Fruit Leather (So Easy!!!)
1. Wash peaches
2. Cut them off of their pit and throw them, skin and all, into the blender.
3. Add a shot of water and puree them until there are no chunks.
4. Spread it onto a piece of buttered parchment paper on a cookie sheet, about 1/8 inch thick.
5. Put it into a 170 degree oven for somewhere between 10-18 hours or longer, depending on your oven. Your fruit leather will be done with it is no longer wet….just sticky and leathery.
***A few things to note about making the fruit leather.
*While you are making it you might think that it is taking FOREVER. And you’d be right. It does. Be patient.
*My fruit leather didn’t dry evenly in my oven…so sometimes I would cut off the sections that were dry (so that they wouldn’t get overdone), and stick the rest back in the oven. This meant I had some weird shaped fruit leather, but I was going to cut it all up to store it anyway, so it didn’t matter.
*I loved it that I could put this in the oven in the late evening, then I could go to sleep and have it be all done, or almost done, when I got up in the morning!
I let us all have a sample taste….then I put it into a jar and into the pantry (should be stored in a cool, dark place). Right now we have so many fresh fruits available to us that I’m sort of hoarding the food I’m preserving. I’ll pull out the fruit leather on some wintery day when fresh fruit is not so abundant! THEN it’ll really be a treat!
Okay, I’m off to go start peeling more apples… :)
