Fruit Leathers
Fruit leathers, or a your kids may know them, fruit roll-ups, make wonderful, packable, healthy snacks year-round. Your kids will love turning freshly harvested fruit into mush, and then making that mush into fruit leathers. Apricots, apples, pears, berries, and plums are all great options to use.
Active Time: 1 hour. Total time: 9-13 hours
Fruit Leather Recipe
Fills a 12 x 18-inch baking sheet. This can be cut into 9 strips of 2 x 12 inches, or however many pieces you'd like!
Here's what you'll need:
4 cups fresh fruit
1/4 cup water
Sugar to taste
Lemon juice to taste
Saucepan
Potato masher
Baking pan
Parchment paper
Here's what you'll do:
Wash all fruit well and remove any stems, pits, seeds, or cores.
Chop all fruit. Now have a taste. If the fruit is tart, add a little sugar to taste. If it is already sweet enough, you can skip the sugar. If it is really sweet, add a bit of lemon juice.
Add all chopped fruit and a 1/4 cup of water to a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for 15 minutes, or until the fruit is cooked through, stirring occasionally.
Uncover the fruit and mash it up with a potato masher.
Cover a baking pan with parchment paper.
Spread a1/8-inch layer of the fruit mixture evenly over the parchment paper.
Place the pan in the oven and heat the oven to 180 degrees. Cook for 8-12 hours, until the fruit leather is no longer sticky.
Let cool and enjoy!