Fruit Leather

At risk of exposing myself to much ridicule from friends I am sharing this post with many who do not know about my secret bloggin' life.

When we were at the lake with our small group, I had a Tupperware filled with two batches of the fruit leather that the children and I prepared. One was mixed berries {strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry} left over from Mary Frances' baptism lunch. The other was blueberry/peach.

The other mother's were as intrigued as I was when I was first introduced to the concept of fruit leather about a year ago here.

I was intrigued because I have never been a fan of "fruit roll-ups". Even as a child it was not something I gravitated towards, but as a mother I knew that my children would love it ~ anything sweet, chewy, and different for them. I like the idea of knowing what they are eating and controlling the sugar content. Plus we are always up for a project in the kitchen.

Well, when I was searching online for a blueberry preserve recipe, I came across some additional directions for making fruit leather, and I knew I had to try it with some of those blueberries we picked.

I found the information here and here.

I've included some pictures of what we did in our kitchen:

Wash 2 cups of ripe or over-ripe fruit.

Put in the top of the double boiler. Cook for 15-20 minutes. Stir.

Place cooked fruit in the food processor* and puree. Add two tablespoons of lemon juice. Add sugar if necessary.

Line jelly-roll pan with parchment paper and spread pureed fruit evenly over the top.

Now for the not so exact part. The temperature on my oven settings doesn't go lower than warm so I placed the prepared trays into a warm oven for 4 to 6 hours and then turned the oven off, but I left the trays inside over night.

I think our leather could stand to be chewier, but it didn't keep my children from consuming mass quantities of fruit leather over the last month.

*I am a sucker for my food processor. I use it for a multitude of tasks throughout a typical week in our kitchen. Without double checking, I can almost assure you the directions recommend the blender, but I typically use a food processor for making puree instead of a blender. In my eyes, it just works better and faster, but you may have different luck with a blender.