Grandma's Chewy Fruit Leather

Grandma was getting pretty annoyed that Grandpa and his crunchy apple chips were getting all the attention from us grandkids...

After all, she was the one who did all of the cooking...

And she was the person who made sure we always had clean clothes to wear when we stayed overnight.

And it was Grandma who tended our wounds when we got too close to the beehives...

or when we skinned a knee while riding our bikes...

or when we fell out of one of the apple trees.

But all we ever talked about was how much we liked Grandpa's crunchy apple chips.

Grandma finally decided to do something about it. She set out to steal some of Grandpa's thunder for herself.

One day she cooked up a huge batch of fresh apple sauce. We loved Grandma's apple sauce, but she served it almost every time we came to visit - especially during the apple harvest - so it just didn't have the novelty of Grandpa's crunchy apple chips.

So Grandma decided to try something a little different...

She took a couple of the drying trays from Grandpa's food dehydrator and lined them with plastic wrap.

Then she poured some of her apple sauce into the trays and spread it out nice and thin.

Next, she loaded the trays into the dehydrator and turned it on.

Several hours later, the apple sauce had been transformed into leathery sheets of delicious chewy apple.

Grandma had just created her own home-made fruit leather!

She called us kids inside for lunch, and, afterwards, surprised us with some of her fruit leather for dessert.

WOW. Was it good! She had sprinkled on some cinnamon before she put the trays of applesauce into the dehydrator, and cut the leathery sheets into strips when they came out. We eagerly ate all she would let us have.

Instantly, Grandpa's crunchy apple chips took a back seat to this new taste sensation.

Grandma's chewy fruit leather became our new favorite snack.

I'll be back soon to tell you about some of the variations Grandma tried in her quest for the ultimate fruit leather recipe.

After her apple sauce fruit leather was such a hit, Grandma started experimenting with other flavors.

First, she added some mashed strawberries into the applesauce mix and dried that. We kids loved it!

Then she added some blackberries. We thought it tasted good, but the seeds made it kind of crunchy... and not in a good way.

So then she tried some mashed blackberries with the seeds strained out. WOW. We really liked that one.

One time she pureed some very ripe bananas and added those to the mixture. That one was tasty, but it took longer to set up, and it was by far the stickiest batch yet.

She tried plums: Very good.

She tried pears: Almost as good as the original apple leather.

Apricots: Good, but we preferred the individual dried apricots that Grandma and Grandpa had been making already.

One day Grandma got a notion that tomato leather might be worth a try. She and grandpa grew some tomato varieties that were almost as sweet as the Italian plums from their little orchard, so she whipped up a batch.

And it was actually pretty tasty...

As long as she didn't tell us beforehand that it wasn't fruit. You know how kids are.

So, you can see that almost any kind of sweet fruit (or veggie) can be turned into tasty fruit leather. Start out with whatever you've got, and just keep experimenting.