Foodie Friday

We borrowed a food dehydrator from my parents and finally were able to try it out last weekend. I bought a bunch of strawberries and blueberries and decided to make fruit leather. It was really quite easy as far as the hands-on work goes, but I don't think I realized just how long it takes for fruit to fully dehydrate.

First I used the food processor, though you could easily use a blender or chopper, to make a smoothie of the berries--1 1/2 lbs of strawberries and 1 1/2 pints of blueberries, give or take some. I didn't add any sugar, honey, etc. because I wanted to see how we liked it "au natural." Some recipes suggested using a seive to remove some of the seeds from the berries, but because the berry mixture was quite thick, I couldn't imagine that working well. Plus, I like texture and fiber in my food.

I lightly sprayed two trays designed for making fruit leather with cooking spray, and poured half of the berry mixture into each.

Then I plugged in the dehydrater, and let it do its thing....basically a fan moves heated air around in a circular motion. The recipe book said it would take anywhere from 8-12 hours, and since I didn't actually start the process of dehydrating until about 1 p.m., our leather still wasn't fully dry when we were ready to go to bed 10 hours later. However, the texture of the leather had definitely changed, and it felt gummy-ish.

So, we put the dehydrator on a timer for another two hours, and hoped for the best! In the morning, it felt *mostly* dry, and at that point I was just ready to wrap it all up. So, I rolled up the leather in individual servings using plastic wrap and, to be on the safe side, stored it in the refrigerator.

Overall, I was pleased with the result, and my husband has been enjoying the fruit leathers in his lunches, too. I think I'd like to incorporate some applesauce or something next time as a bit of a filler; some recipes even say to use applesauce as the main ingredient in fruit leather. Also, I'm glad I didn't use any additional sweetener. The fruit-only leather tasted sweet enough to me, and is certainly much healthier without the extra sugar.

If you're interested in trying out drying, you don't necessarily have to own (or borrow!) a dehydrator. There are a couple of other methods for drying food, including using your oven. In the future, I'm looking forward to making more fruit leather, and I also want to try to make some jerky and dehydrate watermelon!