Saturday, June 13, 2009

RHUBARB FRUIT LEATHER

Grow it. Wash it. Cut it.
Sugar it.
Cook it.
Blend it.
Flavor it.
Blend it some more.
Spray a cookie sheet with vegetable spray. Smooth it out.Pour the hot mixture on a cookie sheet.

Make sure it's evenly spread. Put it in the oven. Make sure the door is cracked so the moisture can escape. I use a wooden spoon.
The finished product. Peel it off the cookie sheet, cut it into rolls and eat. It's delicious. No one can tell it is not normal fruit leather and it's practically free.
The light colored one is watermelon kiwi, the red is cherry and the dark is orange with some dried cherries blended in.


RHUBARB FRUIT LEATHER –Lynne Snyder

4 cups rhubarb, cut into ½ inch pieces
1 1/3 cups sugar
¼ cup water
1 pkg unsweetened Kool Aid®

Wash rhubarb and cut into ½ inch pieces. Put rhubarb, sugar and water into a pot and bring to a boil. I cover it at first and then uncover it to boil as much liquid off as possible.

As soon as the rhubarb is soft you can blend it—I use an immersion blender—also called a “stick” or “hand held” blender. If you use a normal blender be extremely careful as hot liquids will “pop” the lid. You may want to let it cool some before blending and then hold the lid on with a kitchen towel folded to make many layers. Add pkg. of Kool Aid, blend again. Pour onto greased cookie sheet—I spray with “Pam” and then smooth it out with my hands. Try to get the rhubarb mixture as evenly spread as possible—maybe even a little thicker on the edges as they dry faster. Put in a dehydrator or an oven set to a low temperature—my oven has a dehydrator feature on it and I can get it to a low temperature and a fan continually runs so it is a more even heat. I even make yogurt in the oven which takes a 110° temperature. For the rhubarb leather I dry it at 140°. This takes at least a day.

Dehydrate until almost dry. Let cool, peel off cookie sheet, roll and cut.

Sometimes I peel off the cookie sheet and put the leather, top side down, right on the oven rack and let it dry for another hour or so. You can lightly dust with cornstarch if desired.

Years and years ago I dried the leather in a car, with a window cracked. The car smelled divine! Just make sure the cookie sheet is perfectly level. And don’t drive off when the leather is in a liquid state. You will be cleaning up a mess. I called this my redneck dehydrator.

Our favorite flavors are grape and cherry but they are all good...except lemonaid. That flavor was so sour.

If you have some fresh fruit you can blend it in the the liquid rhubarb. If you have enough you don't need the Kool Aid as your leather will take on the flavor of the fruit. Taste it before pouring it on the cookie sheet to see if it has enough flavor.

4 comments:

Kathy said...

I think you could probably sell these to people like me who are drooling at the thought of eating them but are just too lazy to execute your well laid out process! Beautiful!

Lorraine said...

You are wonder woman, like Kathy above...oh my God!

umbrellalady said...

I realize that this is a year later from your rhubarb leather post but I have to thank you for this recipe - I never thought to use my rhubarb or koolaid for flavouring it! Thank you, thank you!

The Kelley Family said...

Thanks for this recipe! It looks great and we are going to try and make some today! I was thinking this was possible but wanted to look it up online first, thanks again!! PS- I may link to your recipe from our blog later today.