Friday, January 24, 2014

Home Made Fruit Roll Ups

Kids like fruit snacks. There. I said it. I mean, really, what kid doesn't? I, however, don’t like buying them. We do purchase a few select varieties and kinds of fruit snacks, whenever I find some on sale for a really good deal (the ones without all the additives and crud).

So, in an effort to appease the very picky yet adorable little boy, we started making fruit roll-ups for snack times (and later, for school lunches). It’s really just fruit leather that’s been spread a bit thinner before sucking the moisture out of it and rolled so that it resembles the popular snacks. If pumpkin pie isn’t your thing, check back for some different recipe ideas or just get a little creative. Add in strawberries to the mix. Perhaps your Thanksgiving flavor is cranberries, a few cooked in and strained will work perfectly to give these a tangy cranberry sauce flavor.


Ingredients
  • Apples
  • Lemon juice
  • Honey
  • Pumpkin (canned or fresh)
  • Buckwheat Honey spice
  • Cinnamon
  • Nutmeg
  • All spice


Directions
To start, we make applesauce. Really good applesauce. 
  1. Apples, water, lemon juice and a bit of honey simmered until soft and breaking down into a sauce.
  2. Then really blend and make your applesauce smooth and silky.
  3. If your using canned pumpkin, add it to the apples and blend again. 
    • If not, soften the pumpkin meat, then blend it down til it resembles baby food and then add to the applesauce.
  4. For the spices I went with buckwheat honey, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.
  5. Spread the fruit out on parchment or silicon mats. (I’ve taken to using parchment because then I don’t need to transfer the rolls.) The parchment does buckle a bit as it gets wet from the fruit, but it doesn’t affect the ability to roll or eat, so I don’t mind.
  6. Into the oven it goes to bake…err, dehydrate.
  7. Keep the oven at a low temp.
  8. Watch closely so they don't burn.
  9. When they’re dry (but not too dry), roll and cut into servings.

And impress your kids with your craftiness. No joke, the neighbor kids ran through the yard saying wonderful things about my cooking as they ate their pumpkin pie fruit rolls. I’m nowhere close to even being in the running for best mom ever, but every inch counts, right? ;)

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