I know! I too was surprised that you could make your own fruit roll ups with ease! I stumbled upon (literally, stumbledupon.com'd) this recipe.
I'll tell you right now, Shania makes it look easy. And simple. And kind of beautiful.
And these are just fruit roll ups. It shouldn't be so intriguing.
And yet, I found myself buying an insane amount of fruit and rolling out the parchment paper to make them.
Now, this blog is called "Clutzy Cooking" for a reason. Namely that I am a complete mess sometimes. And this recipe, this was one of those times. I covered myself, my counters, and my beautiful new food processor (which was, by the way, the best gift ever!!), in pink goo.
Sticky pink goo. Sticky pink goo that stains.
My OCD personality was seriously disturbed by this entire fiasco but, once everything was cleaned up and the cookie sheets were in the oven, I was back to optimistic about my results.
Well, oops.
My oven doesn't have the low settings this recipe calls for in order to dehydrate the fruit puree. You need to set your oven to 150-180 and allow it to bake in the warmth all day. My oven had two settings, "WM" which I am guessing means "warm" and "200" which was past the maximum temperature of 180 by rather a lot.
I decided to set it between the two. Needle middling between "WM" and "200".
Allow me to be the expert to tell you that doing this will cause you to burn your fruit roll ups at the 4 hour mark. Which is about half as long as they are supposed to bake.
See how my roll ups didn't exactly roll right? That's because they got too stiff and burnt. Breaking into brittle shards in some places.
FAIL.
My friends still loved them though, even if I couldn't face the food failure. They even took leftovers home! So, for those of you who know how to follow recipes (which I don't apparently) and who won't make a mess (which I always do), you should try this out! The idea is extremely fun and, when executed correctly, a smashing success. Which is the reason I decided to post them, even if mine are less than ideal. Well, and the fact that my friends were begging for the recipe. Funny sometimes how even what we see as huge flops, other people find little victories in :)
Make & Enjoy <3
Rolled Fruit Leather
4 cups fruit (apples, pears, peaches, apricots)
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon honey or agave syrup (optional)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Peel and dice the fruit, removing all seeds (unless you’re using berries, like I was. Then, don't be crazy. Keep the seeds). Add diced fruit and water to a stockpot and bring to a boil. Add in lemon juice and honey. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue cooking until fruit is cooked through and can easily be mashed. Using a stick blender or carefully pouring the cooked fruit into a stand blender/processor, puree the fruit until smooth. On a parchment-lined cookie sheet or dehydrator tray, thinly spread out the puree between 1/8″ and 1/4″ thick. Bake at the lowest oven temperature (150-180 degrees F) for 8-10 hours or according to the manufacturer’s directions in your dehydrator. Fruit should not be sticky enough to stick to you and grab on when touched. Remove cookie sheets from oven and allow to cool slightly. Roll up from one end to the other depending on the kinds of rolls you’d like. For Fruit-By-the-Foot-style rolls, roll from short end to short end and cut 1″ pieces off the roll. For Fruit Roll-Up-style rolls, roll the long end and cut 3-4″ rolls off the large roll.
This recipe is fun and should be treated as such! But if you're a clutz like me, just be careful. You don't want your treats to turn out more leather then fruit and more mess then fun like mine did.
*UPDATE* So, while I am not anxious to try this again, I found this cooking blog with a great tutorial on how to make fruit leather roll ups and maybe NOT be a disaster like me. For all of you looking, I encourage checking it out and maybe deciding on a batch modified between her recipe and the one I shared here. Thanks for commenting, all of you, and making me feel less like a foodie flop! You are all lovely people :)
