I learned a few things about fruit leather over the 2010-2011 winter. The first was that my kids really only like strawberry fruit leather. Apricot, grape, and peach just are not their favorite so they would request the strawberry in their lunch and then when that was gone, they didn’t want fruit leather anymore. The other piece of knowledge was really just a confirmation of my suspicion that I had been drying the fruit leather too long. Turns out a lot of the leather was brittle and crumbly, not at all what I wanted to pack in lunches.
So this year I went in search of the perfect drying time. In my house, in late Spring it turns out five hours is the magic time. Or at least I think it is, we’ll see how all those leathers peel once they’re out of the freezer. They were much more supple when they went in. I made four or five batches to make close to 100 strips using my usual recipe. I used to cut the leather and the parchment into strips and then roll it, this year I rolled the entire sheet of leather in a large piece of parchment, then cut it at two inch intervals to create the strips. It made the whole process so much easier.
Putting By 