Strawberry-Banana Fruit leather
It’s not every day you spend twelve plus hours driving the highway with two kids under the age of five, but when you do, you’re gonna need snacks.
Snacks help keep the kids happy. Trust me.
Knowing that we were going to be headed up to Tennessee in the middle of May for my younger brother’s graduation, I decided to plan ahead and make some homemade snacks for everybody – because let’s face it, not only is homemade food cheaper, it’s the best way to stay allergy-friendly.
Besides, it’s actually kind of fun! (experimenting with recipe creation is a fun hobby – once you get past the point where not even the dog will eat your kerfuffles)
For this trip, we made a bunch of homemade jerky – mostly for the ride home since it will last forever, homemade summer sausage and sliced apples for the trip up, hummus and carrot sticks for the ride up and to eat while we were there, and last of all, I had some strawberries and bananas that needed to be used up, so I thought fruit leather for the trip back would be a good idea.
It was a good idea, the problem is, there apparently weren’t enough strawberries and bananas, because the kids ate it all before we even left.
I know I should keep a better handle on what my kids are up to, but how was I suppose to know they’d figure out that I hid it in the refrigerator?
Snacks keep the kids happy at home too. 😛
The first recipe I tried using bananas is still one of my favorite – blueberry banana fruit leather – and I knew I was on to something right then and there.
I love using bananas in my fruit leather recipes. Ripe bananas add natural sweetness to other, less sweet fruits to balance them out beautifully. (I made straight strawberry fruit leather one time, and even though the strawberries themselves were delicious, the resulting fruit leather was SO tart is was hard to eat!)
Contrary to what you might think, bananas don’t turn brown when you dry them – not even in straight dehydrated bananas, let alone mixed with higher acid fruits like strawberries!
Strawberry Banana Fruit Leather
Strawberry-Banana Fruit leather
Are you looking for an easy and healthy treat? This fruit leather is so good- your whole family will love it!
Ingredients
- 2 cups Fresh strawberries, capped*
- 1 banana*
- *Feel free to adjust the amount of fruit to suit your taste.
Instructions
- Place strawberries and banana in a blender or food processor and pulse until smooth
- Spread onto fruit leather trays, or parchment-lined cookie sheet to 1/8-1/4 inch thick.
- Dehydrate in your dehydrator on the fruit setting for 4-6 hours, or on the lowest setting of your oven for 3-4 hours (most ovens go down to about 170º, if your lowest setting is higher, you may want to prop the door open a little bit.
- Dry until fruit leather is no longer sticky to touch.
- Remove from oven and let cool
- If you dried your leather on parchment paper, cut it into strips and roll up.
- If you dried it directly on your fruit leather trays, carefully pry fruit leather off in strips, and roll. The advantage to not having parchment paper in your fruit leather is that once you roll them up, they’ll stay rolled without tying.
- Notes: I have a Nesco Snackmaster dehrydator, and LOVE it. It’s held up well over several years of use. My mother-in-law has an Excalibur dehydrator which I’ve borrowed a few times and love even more, but it’s a little bit out of my price range.
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