Dehydrating : Kiwi Fruit and Apple Puree

At the markets recently while buying more bananas to dehydrate, the organic grower had on his stand dehydrated kiwi fruit. This is the first time I have ever seen it, and one thing that I never even thought of doing. A small snack pack cost $4.50, and were delicious. Another DIY  to do, and great way to save money, and at the moment there are a few great bargains around, anything below 20 cents each is good.

Bowl of Kiwi Fruit

Kiwi fruit are covered in very tiny hairs. The dried fruit I bought had the skins still on, and I decided to do it the same way myself. They didn't taste tough with it on and all the goodness in the skin is better for you. I have a small nail scrubbing brush for just this sort of thing and it was fairly easy just to scrub them off. An alternate way is to peel the kiwi fruit, but now that I have done it, skin on would be better, as it holds the fruit together. I just cut the little nobbly bits at the end off.

RHS with the "fur" rubbed off

I cut them about 6 mm (1/4 inch) and sprayed with a bit of lime juice my normal thing but you could not do that as they won't brown, and placed them in the dehydrator.

Hard not to eat as is.

This only took up 4 shelves, so I decided to go through my preserved fruit, and turn it into a puree to dehydrate as leather, and in this case the apples were the longest date of 2011, 5 years old. I am not worried about my own fruit being that old, but I do like to keep it reasonably current and when this happens I either boil it up again and have it hot or turn it into leather. Sometimes I add cinnamon to it which is nice, but I left it plain this time.

LHS Baking Paper RHS Silicone

As a change this time I folded some baking paper into 6 and spread the fruit on each square. The paper I use to roll the leather up after its done and I thought small bite size ones saves cutting it. Larger leathers can be placed over roasts, such as apple over pork, or cut up through cake batter, adds a zing.

Bitesize

 Highly recommend getting a dehydrator, if you are campers and have grandchildren, they will eat everything as fast as you dehydrate them. Better than biscuits and cake.

Ready to come out.

The finished results of both fruits taste delicious and a great way to save money.

Till next time.