I have learned from experience, if we leave the ripening strawberries too long, especially when it is wet, we will end up with loads of rotten, snail holed strawberries. So yesterday I armed myself with a bucket, headed out in between rain showers to see if there were any strawberries that needed picking.
I picked, and picked, and only stopped when my bucket was full and the rain started up again.
I picked nearly 2 kilograms of strawberries in about 20 minutes, yep, it is definitely strawberry season at The Pickle Farm.
Usually we make jam with the first good haul of berries, but the jam-maker was at work (I suck at making jam), and a month or two ago Fowlers sent me a whizz-bang Dehydrator to try out and today was the day – We were going to make fruit leather!
Fruit leather is a great way to use up the strawberries that are not 100% totally and utterly perfect – the ones that might have a snail hole, or a squishy end, but are still perfectly good to eat. Just cut off the not quite right bit.
Strawberries make great fruit leather because you don’t have to cook them and you shouldn’t have to add any sugar either. Just puree them and you are ready to go.
Of course if you don’t have an over abundance of strawberries you can combine them with other fruit – cooked apple or rhubarb go perfectly with strawberries. And if you don’t have a dehydrator you can make it in the oven.
I used the recipe from the Fowlers recipe book that comes with the dehydrator as a rough guide, and made the rest up as I went along.
Here’s how we made our strawberry fruit leather…
- 3 cups of washed, hulled and sliced strawberries
- the juice of a lemon
- Pop your hulled, sliced strawberries in a food processor or blender and whiz until they form a smooth puree.
- Add the juice of a lemon and whiz to combine.
- Spread the puree evenly onto the fruit leather sheet and place carefully into the dehydrator.
- Set the dehydrator to 55 – 60 degrees Celcius and dry until leather feels pliable and comes away from the sheet easily – 6-8 hours depending on how thick your leather is.
- Alternatively spread the puree evenly on a well lined baking tray and pop it in a super low oven to dry – 8-12 hours depending on how thick your fruit leather is.
If you want to roll your fruit leather to store, try to do it while it is still warm and pliable and roll it on sheets of grease proof paper so it doesn’t stick together.
We decided to make our fruit leather in bite sized fun shapes!
To do this you’ll need metal cookie butters and a hammer… yes, a hammer! The fruit leather is tough like… well… leather! So the cookie cutters won’t cut through it on their own. You’ll need to give them a good bash with the hammer on a chopping board to cut your shapes out.
If you don’t have metal cookie cutters you could push plastic cutters in as hard as you can to make an indentation, and then use scissors to cut out the shape. Or just cut shapes by hand with scissors and have some fun.
Store the fruit leather in an air tight container.
The shapes are the perfect size for a quick snack, or to put in lunch boxes and they also make cool cake decorations!
I’ll be sharing the recipe for these strawberry and lemon muffins soon!
{Disclosure: I was given a Fowlers Ultimate Dehydrator to try. I am under no obligation to blog about this product. All opinions are my own.}
Kate says
Are you kidding me? That’s an AWESOME idea. You seriously amaze me with every post Kate. Love it.
alana says
you guys must have an awesome strawberry patch!!! love the shapes as well – great idea!
Bek {Just For Daisy} says
Your strawberry haul was fabulous!! Jealous! :)
Love the dehydrator but might give it a go in the oven… apple perhaps?!!
h. says
Wow I had no idea you can make something like that home. Yeh I might try as well. Thanks for sharing
JDaniel4's Mom says
I love the idea of placing a fruit leather shape on a muffin. The fruit leather looks delicious.
Kat says
These are so great! Im wondering if these will work on a very low heat in the oven, like you make banana chips? Going to try. Lovely idea putting them on the cake too. :)
katepickle says
Yes you can! The instructions to dry the leather in the oven are included in the recipe above :)
Sandi says
It says 8-12 hours in the oven – what should the oven be set at?
katepickle says
The instructions above say ‘super low’ which means as low as you can set your oven for. :)