Right now we have tons of fresh blackberries and raspberries in our Minnesota back yard and I was looking for a new way to use them.  I found a wonderfully easy recipe to make fruit leather and it was a big hit with our whole family.

Not only is this all natural, but it costs very little (or nothing, if it's from berries in your back yard!) and is a great way to use up fruits that are past their prime.  Kids can have also a great time mixing and matching fruits.

Here's the recipe, adapted from Recycle Your Day.

Easy Fruit Leather

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh fruit (cleaned, pitted, peeled, etc.)

2-3 TBS honey (raw and local, if possible)

Several drops of lemon juice

Tools:

Blender, sheet pan, parchment paper (optional: food mill or sieve and spoon)

Instructions:

1.  Puree your fruit in a blender until well processed.  If you like, you can remove the seeds from fruits like blackberries by pressing the puree through a sieve with a spoon or running it through a food mill.  We left our seeds and liked the crunch and extra fiber.

2.  Stir in your honey and lemon juice.  You can adjust the measurements to suit the sweetness of your fruit.

3.  Line your sheet pan with parchment paper and pour the puree in to about an 1/8 inch thickness.

4.  Dry according to preference.  Options for drying include:

• The original recipe calls for cooking it in an oven at 200 degrees for approximately 2 hours.  I found that our fruit leather needed easily twice this amount of time.  Our raspberry/blackberry mixture needed about 4 hours and our strawberry fruit leather slightly more.  In light of this, I went looking for more energy efficient means of drying it.
• Other recipes online call for setting the oven to 140 and leaving it overnight.  This can cause it to become too dry and crack if you're not careful, and obviously there's still a fair amount of energy usage again. 
• Use a food dehydrator.
• You can try the "hot car method," which is widely recommended online.  Put the fruit leather in the back window of a south facing car on a sunny day.  It should take about an afternoon.
• Dry your leather outside.  Simply cover with a window screen or cheesecloth (tented) and leave in a sunny location where it will be undisturbed.
• Dry it outside in a solar cooker or even under a garden cold frame (a glass cover meant to protect plants from frost).
• If you have other ideas, please leave them in the comments!

The fruit leather is ready when it is just slightly sticky to the touch.  When it's ready, it will easily pull off the parchment paper.  Cut it and roll it up.  You can also simply cut it into rectangles to serve. Store it in the refrigerator (a glass jar would be perfect) if you're not planning on eating it withint the day.  Ours didn't last that long!