Monday Health Tip - Homemade fruit leather

Fruit Leather

Are you looking for more ways to include fruits in your child's diet? Or maybe you want to have fruits handy for vacation trips as a to-go snack? (And no, Welch's Fruit Snacks don't cut it for me because they have gelatin, and artificial flavors and colors. It's more fun to make it yourself anyway!) Have you ever thought of introducing your child to the mango jelly that you relished as a child, and wondered where to find an authentic product that melts in your mouth and tastes sweet and tangy at the same time? You can make it in your own kitchen, and I will show you how! But first, let's learn some facts about fruit leather.

What is fruit leather? 

 

Simply put, it is dehydrated fruit puree. It is a condensed form of the whole fruit, with a longer shelf life. What is called maamiDi taanDra in Telugu or aam papaD in Hindi or aam sotto in Bengali, is called fruit leather in English. It is also known as mango jelly in India.

 

Traditionally, it was made in homes by sun-drying fruit pulp. Today, it is commercially made in India by adding preservatives and sugar to mango pulp, which is sun-dried and one layer is added on top of another to create a bar.

Nutritional value of fruit leather

Since it is made from whole fruit, fruit leather contains the same nutritional value as the fruit, with some changes depending on the other ingredients. Vitamin C may be reduced as it is oxidized easily after the fruit is cut.

This recipe is for mango leather, but you can use any fruit that you have in abundance. Apples, peaches, plums, pears, berries, bananas, pineapples, are all good for this recipe! This is by no means the complete list of fruits so just use your imagination and your favorite fruit. The only thing to take note of is that different fruits have different percentages of water content, so the dehydrating time will vary greatly from two hours up to eight hours (look at my tip about reducing baking time at the end of the post). 

You can also mix two or more fruits to create different tastes and textures. It is a very easy process that anyone can do, and this can be a great way to introduce older kids to food preservation through dehydration.

Here's the recipe!

 

What you need:

2 cups chopped mango
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon organic raw sugar (optional)

What you do:

Image jessicafm/Flickr CC

Preheat the oven to the lowest setting, 150F or 200F will work, anything below 200F is okay - it just might take a little longer to dehydrate if you use a lower temperature. Take all the ingredients in a blender and blend to a smooth puree. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and grease the paper with some oil or butter. Pour the mango puree onto the greased paper and using a spatula, knife, or the back of a spoon, smooth it out so that the puree is spread evenly across the tray. It needs to be as thin as possible, without being transparent, around 1/8th of an inch. Put this tray in the middle rack of the oven and set the timer to 2 hours. Check on it every 2 hours. It is done when the fruit peels away easily from the tray and you don't find any of it sticking to the tray. Mine took approximately 5 hours. Remove the tray from the oven and let it cool completely before you try to handle the fruit leather. Once cooled, use a scissors to cut into strips, roll them up and store in zip-loc bags for up to a week at room temperature (70F), a few months in the fridge, and as long as you want to in the freezer!  

Tips and variations:

1. You could mix different fruits to create variations -  try mixing berries, or mango-pineapple, banana-watermelon, mango-peach.

2. You could make a spicy savory fruit leather by adding Indian rock salt, or chaat masala, or cinnamon (pairs well with apple).

3. Using a sweetener is completely optional. If the fruit is sweet to begin with, you probably won't need any extra sweetener. Remember that the sugars are concentrated in the fruit after dehydrating, so it will turn out sweeter after it is done.

4. If you use organic fruits, you can include the skin of fruits like apples and pears for a slightly different texture. It is advisable to peel off the skin if it is not organic.

5. To reduce oven time, take the fruit puree and sweetener in a thick-bottomed pan and cook on low heat until it loses some of its moisture and thickens up. This way it will have to spend less time baking in the oven. Add lemon juice after you remove from heat and then pour it into the prepared baking tray.

6. Don't pour all the fruit puree at once into the baking tray. Pour some and spread it around in the tray and add some more if you think it needs some more thickness. If you pour it all at once, it might turn out too thick.

7. If you don't have an oven for dehydration, use the traditional method of sun drying. It might take 24-48 hours of sun, or more, depending on how hot it is. Cover the tray with a light cheese cloth or muslin cloth if you are concerned about contamination with dust or other particles.

8. Sometimes, the edges are done first and the center remains sticky. In that case, cut out the edges and keep the center back in the oven to dehydrate some more.


This is a great way to get kids to eat fruit, as well as enjoy it. When made at home, you will know what ingredients go into it, and you can be flexible with what you want to use. When you have an abundance of fruit in your home this summer, try making some fruit leather!

Fruit leather image by kthread/Flickr CC