HomeMade- Fruit Leather Best homemade treat yet!

Whew! I have been on a HomeMade roll this week! I got this bug to quickly do everything I have been used to doing in the past.

Before we moved to this lovely corner in NorthWest Colorado, I was used to making my own cleaners, snacks, crackers, detergents.... and pretty much anything I could figure out or find a recipe for. Since we moved and lived in our sweet little trailer for almost a year, I got out of the practice.

Well now things have settled down with moving in our house, morning sickness and on. I now feel like superwoman and want to get back in to the groove of being a complete HomeMade MOM again!

So, this last week in our Bountiful Basket, we got 40 pounds of apples!! I was so excited - applesauce, apple butter, and apple chips all floated around in my little head. I love doing food preserving. I also had treated my kids to some real fruit leather, like the ones we all enjoyed as kids - no not Fruit by the Foot kind, but the REAL kind!

Then it hit me - I have all these apples at home, I can make our OWN fruit leather for way less money than .69 a package. I was in creative heaven! I searched some blogs, getting a feel for how it is done ( which is SUPER easy!) and whipped up a batch of my own.

This also served as a fun science lesson with the kids!

I use my handy dandy Blendtec blender for everything, and this was no different. I threw 4 apples in the jar, a little flax and hemp seed for added nutritional benefit, some lemon juice and a touch of honey.

Blend....

Blend.....

I don't have the trays I need for my dehydrator so I  just used some plastic wrap. For future reference, I WILL be getting me the trays! I ended up taking some of it out of my dehydrator and putting it in my oven at it's lowest temp. I would rather use the dehydrator, but it was getting too hot and not able to circulate the air as well with the plastic wrap.

And VOILA!!!  We got HomeMade fruit leather... and it is going quickly! Good thing I have about 20 more pounds of apples to store..............

Recipe -

4 apples (or about 5 cups of any fresh fruit)
juice of half a lemon
1 TBS flax seed
1 TBS hemp seed

Add all ingredients to a high powered blender. (you add a little bit of water to help it mix ) Blend until smooth. Poor on dehydrator sheets or line a cookie sheet with a good quality plastic wrap. Spread mix to about 1/4 inch thick. It gets thinner as it drys. You know it's done when the center is no longer sticky. Pull off of plastic wrap or dehydrator sheets and roll up on wax paper. 

Will store for months in the fridge or in an air tight container!....... If it lasts that long!