I really like fruit snacks,
fruit roll ups and fruit leather. I used to buy stretch island fruit
leathers when I was in high school. As everything has done it became
really expensive. I stopped buying them because they are like 99 cents
each. Last time I ate fruit leather was probably when I won some in a
giveaway. Archer Farms sells it but it is still $3.99 a box. I always
wanted to make fruit leather. I used to have a fruit snack maker, it was
nasty. I have a dehydrator but I never used it for making fruit
leather. The dehydrator seems to take forever to use so I didn't even
attempt it. I kinda forgot about it for a while, until a friend of mine
posted a recipe for fruit leather on Facebook. I decided I would finally
try it. I was so excited about it. I couldn't sleep. I am a total dork.
I went to the local fruit stand with the full intention of making one
of the recipes on Oh My Veggies. She has a lot of fruit leather recipes.
Unfortunately not really in flavors I am fond of like banana, mango and
strawberry banana. I wanted to try the peach raspberry recipe. That
sounds really good. When I went to the fruit stand they didn't have any
raspberries. So, I bought blackberries. I took Noah with me so you know
there was a variety of fruit purchased. Half of what I wanted to buy
wasn't in the store. So, we just grabbed some fruit.
The inspiration for
this recipe came from soap. I was in the bathroom and I looked at the
soap I have and I decided to make Pearberry fruit leather. I had
strawberries but I wanted pure strawberry so I thought I would try pear
and blackberry. I wasn't too sure how it would turn out. Originally I
was just going to make strawberry yesterday as we had a play date. I figured
since there was room in the oven and it was on and the kitchen was
already messy, I would make it too.
Here is my recipe for Pearberry Fruit Leather:
3 pears
1 container of blackberries
1 tablespoon of honey
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees
Cut
up pears and place in the food processor. Add the blackberries and
purée until there are no lumps. Add honey and mix it up.
Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray and spread it evenly. Bake it for about 5 or 6 hours until completely dry.
Remove the fruit leather from the cookie sheet carefully and cut in to strips and enjoy.
My
fruit leather is really thin. It is really good this way. It melts in
your mouth and doesn't hurt your teeth, like the thicker stuff does. It's also a little crunchy. We love it though. Noah tried to attack it this morning, I thought it would be great for lunches.
If
you would like it thicker you could use a smaller cookie sheet or
increase the amount of pears and blackberries.