Cherry Fruit Leather

I had not even realized that there is a cherry season here in the Hudson Valley but, thanks to a fortuitous Facebook post by a friend, we spent a few hours picking the most gorgeous sweet cherries at Fix Brother’s Fruit Farm in Hudson last weekend. It was a glorious morning – clear and sunny with a nice breeze that kept us from getting too hot. The cherries hung like jewels from the trees with a beautiful backdrop of bright blue skies.

Our small son basically ate his weight in cherries by using his mouth as his bucket – it’s highly efficient and probably saved us a few dollars when we went to pay since they did not ask us to plunk him on the scale… By the end of the outing, he looked like he’d committed some sort of grisly murder (luckily, I had some wipes in the car). He had a ball! The only downside was that we did have to change quite a few more yucky diapers than usual over the next day or so as the fruit made its way through his digestive system.

Then we spent the rest of the day making things with those cherries — namely, cherry pie, pickled cherries from the new Food in Jars cookbook and this here cherry fruit leather. (The other recipes will be coming soon.)

My husband and I had thumbed through a variety of cookbooks for inspiration before we headed out to the farm since we wanted to get a sense of how much we’d need to pick (and what kind) for various projects.

We were drawn to the fruit leather recipe in Sherri Brooks Vinton’s excellent book, Put ‘em Up! in part because it was so simple and in part because our son loves fruit leathers and we were intrigued by the idea of making our own.

We don’t have a food dehydrator (yet) but this recipe just calls for you to bake the leather on a cookie sheet at very low heat in the oven for a few hours.

The resulting fruit leathers are beautiful and very delicious – sweet and intensely flavorful. I think I would use a little less sugar than the 1/2 cup Sherri’s recipe called for next time, depending on the sweetness of the fruit I was using.

Next: Get the recipe!

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Heidi A.

2:13AM PDT on Jul 6, 2012

What a wonderful story and very lovely recipe. When I was a child, one of our neighbors was a fantasticly generous and talanted home maker. We played with her children. One Spring, I think her name was Deborah, came out and gave us all pieces of Fruit Leather her mother had made. It was Peach and it was delicious. I am so happy to get this recipe and thankful for reminding me of that happy day as a child..

July 6
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Kasia N.

3:06AM PDT on Jul 5, 2012

Thanks !

July 5
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Duane B.

7:12AM PDT on Jul 4, 2012

Thank you for sharing.

July 4
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John B.

4:17PM PDT on Jul 3, 2012

Thanks Eve for the article, great pics and the recipe.

July 3
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Spiralyne S.

9:14AM PDT on Jul 3, 2012

Very interesting. I love cherries.

Past Member .

10:10PM PDT on Jul 1, 2012

I also love a fruit - veggie leather combination using honey and fruit juice rather than sugar. At times, I also grow a crop of algae and add some of that to the mix. Wild Spirulina algae was harvested, sun-dried, ground and added to amaranth or quinoa flour prepared by the Aztecs, Incas and several tribal groups. The algae is very high in vitamins, minerals, proteins and polyphenolics make a very balanced food when added to the fruits, veggies and honey.