Homemade Fruit Leather

Last week we went strawberry picking (more on that later!).  We came home with a little over 7 pounds of strawberries!  And they are so delicious!  However, since we're not really jam or strawberry pie people, we've just been eating them straight for pretty much every meal.  But, as madly as we've been trying to eat them, we still had more than we could handle and I really didn't want them to go bad!

So . . . I decided to pull out our good ol' food dehydrator!  I really don't use that thing enough.  Anyway, my kids LOVE fruit leather, so instead of just drying strawberry slices that I know my kids wouldn't eat, I decided to puree those ripe little berries right up and make some strawberry fruit leather!  If you have a dehydrator, it's super simple.  I just dumped my berries in the blender, blended them until smooth, then poured the puree right onto the sheet and set it for 135º F and turned it on!  (It can take anywhere from 4-8 hours, you just have to check it regularly.)  I didn't add any additional sugar because our strawberries were so ripe, but you can add honey or corn syrup or other sweetener if you'd like to make your fruit leather sweeter.  And, guess what???  You can make fruit leather even if you don't have a dehydrator!  Just stick it in the oven!  I found this great recipe from pinterest, and there were about a million more to choose from!  Next up: dried pineapple.  I'm on a dehydrating kick now!