Homemade Fruit Roll-Ups

Hey, check it out!  Last night at around 8 I was feeling inspired, staring out at my orange tree, thinking about what I could do with all...that... fruit!  And then it hit me!  Why not make my own fruit leather?  After a little bit of research I found that there's no real recipe to follow and it's crazily easy to do.  The downside is that it uses plastic wrap and the only non-plastic recipe that I was able to find used a silicon liner, which I do not have.  With cancer rates on the rise and all, I don't feel entirely comfortable using plastics (never mind HEATING them) but, I'm a gambler, I guess, because I made these treats.

I started with a bowl of fruit.

I used about five oranges, one lemon, a dozen or so cherries (all picked from trees in my yard), a quarter of a cantaloupe, a handful of blackberries and two small peeled, chopped apples.

I generously sprinkled this fruit with sugar.  You can use anything. Agave nectar, honey... whatever.  But I had sugar, so I used it.  Though I felt like I had added enough because the oranges are so sweet, I'm hearing reports that the final product is sour, so don't skimp on the sugar.

Next, you make a puree of this fruit.  Believe it or not, I am the only one in the world without a food processor.  So, I was reliant on a hand mixer and whisk.  I wasn't able to get my puree totally smooth and worried that this would effect the final roll up, but it really didn't.

Now you want to line your cookie sheet with plastic wrap and pour your mixture on top.

Don't worry about the wrap melting in the oven.  Because your heat setting will be so low, the plastic will not melt.  It will shrink just slightly, so you want to leave a tiny overhang.

Preheat your oven to 170.  If your oven will go down to 150, I'd say to even do that.  Mine will not.  170 is the lowest heat setting, so I used it.

I put this in the oven at roughly 9 pm and took it out of the oven at 6:30 am.  So, cooking time was around 9 1/2 hours.  You're not really cooking this, of course.

You are using the heat of the oven to dry the fruit.

Then you will remove the sheet of leather from the pan and turn it leather side down onto a sheet of parchment paper.

Remove the plastic wrap and cut it up into strips using a pizza roller or scissors.

And there you have it!

Here for the enjoying!

I am really looking forward to the day when I have an abundance of peaches!  I see many roll-ups, cobblers and preserves in my family's future!