My kids love "fruit snacks". These snacks made with "real fruit juice" have really no nutritional value and questionable ingredients (including dyes).
In my attempt to become a healthier family by slowly changing things that we eat and use to more earth-friendly, HUMAN-FRIENDLY products; I scour webpages looking for recipes to make HOMEMADE replicas of our favorite things.
I found many different and difficult recipes for fruit leather. ALL require you to cook it for a VERY, VERY long time. So, it took me a few weeks to actually plan to make this stuff. It required me to keep my oven on 150 degrees for 7+ hours! It actually was more like 10 hours. It was fun to make, and it actually tastes like all natural fruit leathers you can buy in the store, but for a fraction of the cost. However, if you time if extremely valueable to you...it might be best just to buy your fruit leather at the store, paying close attention to the ingredients. :)
BlueBerry Fruit Leather
The recipe that I used, called for 2 cups of blueberries and a few tablespoons of molasses. I am not saying that this recipe is not as good as others...but the one you will find here has three different recipes: blueberry peach, peach and strawberry fruit leather. (Her blog is really fantastic, too.)
Two cups of applesauce (well, close enough) added to the blueberry mixture and blended.
I really like this color. :)
Lining cookie sheet with wax paper and spreading blueberry mixture out.
The ends were a bit crispy, but the middle was just right. I just cut them into strips and rolled them up in strips of wax paper. The keep in the fridge for quite some time. The boys werent very happy with them at first..M, however, gobbled them right up.. :)
