Quick Fruit Leathers

As spring nears, and I make plans for my garden, I usually start looking for some way to keep preserving----I miss the clackety-clack of the my pressure canners and the hum of the dehydrator. One of my favorite ways to keep the dehydrator running in winter is to make Fruit Leathers. They are easy to make, and if you use your own canned apple (or other fruit) sauce, you can be enjoying your own fruit snacks in no time. My method makes fruit leathers a great "kids cooking" activity, too. Here it is:

To every pint of applesauce, add one half-pint jar of homemade jelly or jam. Stir well, and spread on heavy food grade plastic wrap or the plastic sheets that came with your dehydrator. Do not use aluminum foil or waxed paper. The puree should be about 1/8 inch thick. Dry in an oven or dehydrator at 120 degrees for 6-8 hours (times may vary depending on thickness and moisture content), or until it is pliable but not sticky. It takes 2 cups of puree to cover one of my dehydrator trays.

**Note: My family likes a really sweet fruit leather, so we do add the jelly or jam, but it is not necessary. Most fruits are so sweet on their own-and become even sweeter when you dehydrate out the moisture----that extra sweetening is not needed. Be your own judge.

I also make fruit leather from combinations of fruits, like pearsauce plus cranberry-apple conserve (the ground nuts in conserves make a nice addition to fruit leathers), or applesauce and peach jam. For a spicy fruit leather, I just dehydrate my homemade Apple Butter.

If you didn't put up any applesauce, or you've eaten it all already, you can drain a quart of apple slices, puree them in the blender, and proceed as above.

For more adventurous flavors, try adding extracts to your puree. Use 1/4 to ½ teaspoon extract per quart of puree. Or, try adding freshly grated citrus peel, 1 teaspoon per quart, to your mixture.

Here are some more ideas and recipes so you can keep that dehydrator tuned up all winter!

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/vege... Apple Cream and Strawberry Rhubarb leather recipes

http://www.suite101.com/mypage.cfm/veget... Plum Fruit Leather recipe

http://www.ichef.com/ichef-recipes/Desse... Basic Fruit leather recipe

http://ftp.oit.unc.edu/herbmed/neat-stuf... Cranberry Fruit leather

If you have questions, please post to the discussion area, or join our Preservers egroup at http://members.aol.com/preservers/group.... , where you will meet a lot of very helpful canners.....both experienced and not-so-experienced. And look for tasty recipes in which to use your garden produce in the other topic areas at www.suite101.com .

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