Fruit
Plum Fruit Leather
- Prep time 15 minutes
- Cook time 6 hours 30 minutes
- makes about 16 pieces
Author Notes
I love to make fruit leather. It’s an extremely rewarding project with very little active time and requires little effort. It’s a great way to use in-season, juicy fruits, but it works just as well with thawed frozen fruit, too. You can adjust the sweetness level to your liking: adding more sugar will make a leather that tastes a bit more like a chewy candy-like treat, but you can just as easily rely on the natural sugars of the fruit and add very little (or none). Like anything made with fresh fruit, the precise cooking time of this leather is somewhat difficult to predict. Different kinds of fruit are juicier, and some will thicken a bit more naturally due to the makeup of their particular combination of flesh, skin, and/or seeds.
Plums—and other varieties of stone fruit—contain a high amount of natural pectin, which makes them easier to make leather with. You can use other fruits instead (even ones that don’t have a naturally high pectin content) but that little bit of extra help thickening—and a great place to start learning the visual cues, which are essential to knowing when your leather is done (you don’t want to rely on time alone). The fruit leather is made by puréeing the fruit and spreading into a thin, even layer on a baking sheet. While you can use a dehydrator for this, I usually make one big tray in my oven instead. As the fruit slowly dries at low heat, the excess moisture evaporates, ultimately leaving only the fibrous parts of the fruit mixture behind. The juicier the fruit/more liquid the pureed mixture, the longer it will take to dry out and become the leathery texture. In the recipe below, I’ll recommend a time to start “checking” it.
To check the leather, use a small offset spatula to lift up the leather at one of the corners. This should happen easily, and the leather should bend and be flexible. If it is soft or seems moist, keep going! —Erin Jeanne McDowell
Ingredients
-
1 1/4 pounds
(565 grams) plums, pitted and roughly chopped
-
1 tablespoon
(15 grams) freshly squeezed lemon juice
-
1 tablespoon to 1/3 cups
(12 to 66 grams) granulated sugar (less for a more natural leather, more for a more candy-like one)
-
1 pinch
fine sea salt
Directions
- Heat the oven to 170°F (this the lowest temperature many home ovens go). Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat (my preference) or parchment paper.
- In a blender, purée the plums, lemon juice, sugar, and salt to combine. Blend on high speed until very smooth, about 2 to 3 minutes. The better/more powerful your blender the finer the final texture of the leather will be. An immersion blender works too, but will result in a more fibrous/less fine final texture.
- Pour onto the prepared baking sheet and spread into a thin, even layer—it should go edge to edge on the parchment paper or silicone mat.
- Transfer to the oven and cook for 6 to 7 hours. The surface of the leather should be dry, not overly sticky or wet to the touch. Start checking it as you suspect it’s dry to see if you can easily lift it off of the edge of the paper/mat; it should bend easily and be flexible.
- Remove from oven and cool the pan completely. Slide off of the baking sheet and onto a cutting board. With one of the longer sides facing toward you, cut the leather into 8 even strips vertically using a pastry wheel or a sharp knife. Then, rotate the pan so that one of the shorter sides is facing you, and cut the strips evenly in half to create 16 pieces of leather.
- Store in an airtight container—you can use parchment or wax paper to separate layers of the leather to prevent them from sticking. Store at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.
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