Fruit Leather



When I was a kid the cool thing to have in your lunch was a Kool-Aid Jammer and Fruit By The Foot.  Alas, I wasn't a cool kid, and I usually had a CapriSun and no sticky, corn syrup, red dye filled Fruit By The Foot.  Total bummer.  Now I'm a little older and a little wiser, and I know my mama was doing me (and maybe my teachers) a favor by not totally pumping me full of sugar and food coloring.  Thanks ma!  Well, we can still enjoy a sticky, fruity treat without all the funky junk.  Enter, fruit leather!

 

My dear friend and neighbor had an abundance of juicy, red strawberries and asked if I wanted half a flat.  Umm, heck yes!  We traded that half flat of berries for jam and chocolate chip cookies, and I got to work on my fruit leather.

First, I washed and hulled two pounds of berries.  Then I popped them in the food processor and pureed them until the liquid was smooth.

At this point, I tasted the puree and it seemed a little tart to me.  So I added a smidge (official US standard measurement - look it up) of honey and a splash of good vanilla until I was satisfied with the taste.  This is totally up to you how much sweetener you add, and you certainly do not have to add vanilla.  I just happen to think everything tastes better with a little vanilla.  If your berries are sweet enough, don't add any honey or sweetener and pat yourself on the back for making no sugar added treats.  Hooray!

 

For a little variety, I chose to make a batch of strawberry banana too.  I blended one pound of strawberries and one pound of bananas in my food processor until smooth.  What a pretty, pretty color!

After tasting this puree, I decided the bananas added enough sweetness so I just added a little splash of vanilla and called it a day.  You can strain the puree through a fine mesh sieve if you want to remove the strawberry seeds, but I don't mind them so I skipped that step.  Next, I lined my dehydrator trays with parchment paper and spread the purees out on the lined trays.

 

You want the puree to be about an 1/8th inch thick.  If your puree is spread too thin, your leather will be brittle.  Too thick, and it will take forever to dry and might be too chewy.

 

Once my trays were all filled it was on to the dehydrator.  Another blogger suggested starting out at a lower than normal temp for fruit leather, so I popped my trays in the dehydrator and set the heat at 105 degrees for 10 hours.  After about 8 hours, I checked my trays and realized they needed to be turned and to dry for a little while longer, and a couple seemed a little runny still.  My dehydrator model has a display with suggestions on temperature settings for different types of foods.  The suggested temp for fruit leather was 135 degrees, so I bumped up the temp and set my timer for another 6 hours.  I know, it's a long, long time to wait for a treat, but your patience will be rewarded!

Check it out!  I made fruit leather!  The texture should be a little sticky, but peel-able.  I'm thinking I need to invest in some Silpats or Teflex sheets for my dehydrator because the parchment paper seemed to bunch a bit.  Plus Silpats and Teflex are reusable - bonus!  But, if you only have parchment paper on hand, that works too and the winkles in the leather don't affect the roll-ability or the tastiness.

 

Peel, roll and enjoy!  These are so tasty and so incredibly easy to make!  These, however, do not look like Fruit By The Foot.

Bam!  Oh that's better.  You can use scissors to cut your fruit leather in to strips.  Then roll up in wax paper or parchment paper and you have your faux Fruit By The Foot.

 

Just look at that gorgeous red color and flecks of strawberry goodness!  Way cooler than store bought, boxed junk in my opinion.  Pack these in your family's lunches for that cool kid factor.  Get the kids involved so they can say, "Yeah, I made these."  Total cool kid status.  I hope you give fruit leather a try!  Don't stop at strawberry or strawberry banana.  Branch out.  Get crazy!  There's a whole rainbow of fruit out there just waiting to be made in to fruit leathery yumminess!

Color Sorting Cups

While perusing Pinterest, as I so often do during naptime, I came across this neat idea for color sorting cups.  My little guy turned 2 in October, and we've been working on colors lately.  I thought this might give him a good hands on way to learn more about his colors.  So to Wally-World we did go!  In addition to my Revlon Red nail polish, we also threw in to the cart the following items:
 

Take&Toss Plastic Cups w/Lids, Colorful Buttons, X-Acto Knife

Beebo (yeah, that's his nickname - I'll tell ya all about it sometime, promise) was pretty excited to get his colorful buttons home and make a big giant mess!  But he was not too happy when he learned that mama was going to cut holes in his cups.  No worries little guy, it's all part of the plan.  Using the largest sized buttons as a guide, I cut slits in the lids so the buttons could drop in to the cups.

I wanted the hole in to the lid large enough so the big button could slip through, but the smaller buttons would stay in the cups when the bowl was tipped over.  Because, let's face it, as soon as this cup is full of buttons it will turn in to a maraca.  I finished the yellow cup and moved on to the next color.  Using the yellow lid as a guide, I marked the next lid with a Sharpie marker so I knew where to cut.

 

It was about this time that I realized the cups did not all have matching lids.  In fact, the only matching set was yellow.  The rest of the cups were all blue and green, and the lids were orange and red.  What the what?!  Okay, no need to panic.  Just needed to rethink my plan of action.

I determined that I would let the Beebs play with the yellow, blue, and green button cups with lids off.  That way he could drop buttons right in to the cups. Things could get messy, but hey, that's life!

 

He had a pretty good time with that, but we did run in to one little hang-up.  The buttons that we bought came with two shades of blue, which he found sort of confusing.  So I took one set of blue out and left the others.
 

 

After that, he quickly got the hang of which buttons went in which cups.
 

 

When he had those three colors down pretty well, I put those away and introduced the red and orange button cups.  I was able to leave the lids on those cups and just explain to him to drop the orange buttons in the cup with the orange lid, red goes with red, etc.

 

 

This was a fun and quick project, and the best part is they store really easily.  Once we're done with our buttons they go in the matching cups with the lids on and get stacked up in the craft cupboard.  Of course, buttons are still pretty small and little folks like to put small things in their mouths, so this project should be used with adult supervision only.  I'll be on the lookout for cups with matching lids, but for the time being this is working out pretty well and helping my little guy learn his colors fast!