I cannot deny that I am a greedy forager, especially where blackberries and greengages are concerned and whilst we most certainly gorged ourselves on the fresh fruit there was a need to find ways of storing a great deal.
Pressed for time I had shied away from the idea of bottling or making jams and chutneys and opted instead for freezing. As my freezer became full of fruit and fruit coulée it became apparent that we required another freezer or an alternative preserving method. The girls love dried fruit so we spent a couple of hours peeling and coring the mountain of apples that we had collected and filled the oven with bamboo canes strung with apple rings. Very pretty looking and after a lengthy 6 hours of cooking time the mountain of apples was consumed in moments, negating the need for storage space and ensuring that they had consumed way above their required five a day!
Whilst the apple rings were enthusiastically devoured and appreciated this was incomparable to what I did with the apples that were too maggot riddled to cut into rings.
These, my friends were chopped, stewed and pureed and then mixed with some of the frozen blackberry puree. I spread it evenly over a lined baking tray and left it cooking in a low oven over night. The following morning heralded my moment of glory, I had successfully made fruit leather. What was more ground breaking though was the presentation. As I snipped it into long centimetre wide strips, peeled off the parchment and rolled it into spirals I had, joy of joys, recreated the much adored and hankered for YoYo Bears. The girls were delighted and promptly set about snipping, peeling and rolling until we had a tub of tightly packed fruit spirals.
Fruit leather is a traditional way of preserving fruit that was particularly suited to hotter climates where trays of pureed fruit could be left to dry in the sun. In the UK an oven on its lowest setting works well or you can purchase purpose built dehydrator ovens.
This is more of a method than a recipe and the fruit combinations and quantities can be varied according to what you have available or to taste. My oven is large so the quantities given cover one of the baking sheets but with a standard sized oven around a kilo of fruit will spread over two.
Blackberry and Apple Leather
400g Apples
500g Blackberries
Juice of ½ Lemon
Honey (to taste – depending on sweetness of fruit)
Peel, core and slice the apples and place in a saucepan with 100ml of water. Bring to the boil and then simmer gently until soft.
Remove from the heat, add the blackberries, the juice of half a lemon and about 50ml of water.
If you have a smoothie attachment for your food processor simply tip the fruit into this and run it until it has passed through and all the seeds have been removed. Alternatively you could blend the fruit and then pass it through a sieve.
Taste the puree and if it is particularly sharp/sour add a small amount of honey (15- 20g), remember that the flavours are going to become very intense so err on the side of caution.
Spread the puree over a large baking tray lined with baking parchment and then place in the oven at 50C. Depending on the wetness of the fruit the process will take between 10 – 15 hours so I usually make these in the evening and leave to cook over night.
As the moisture cooks out of the fruit it becomes paper thin and very dry, the fruit leather is ready when it feels dry in the middle of the tray as well as at the edges.
Remove from the oven and with the leather still on the parchment cut it into strips using a pair of scissors. The parchment can then be peeled away.
We get through these pretty quickly so I am not sure on their actual shelf life but I would imagine that if they are kept cool and dry in an air tight container they should last for a few months.
