DIY Pantry: Fruit Leather
Homemade Fruit Leather
If all the forces of the natural world converge perfectly—warm spring nights, ample summer rain, abundant pollinators—Colorado’s fruit trees will produce a veritable parade of sweetness. First cherries, followed by apricots; peaches, plums; and finally, as daylight recedes like a golden tide, apples and pears.
Fruit leather happens like this: You come upon a laden fruit tree, farm stand or U-pick orchard. You find, in every sun-sticky bite of ripe peach, the distillation of a fleeting season. You munch and drool and moan. Like falling in love, rational thought unravels. You pile blushing orbs in baskets, bags and boxes. You load your car, tossing out non-essentials like spare tires. Driving home, hundreds of whole fruit exhaling summer’s perfume, you dream of peach jam, cobbler and pie.
Two days later, those hundreds of fuzzy peaches are as needy as newborns. Fruit flies have become their own Frankensteinesque experiment of unbridled breeding. You need a plan. You start making fruit leather.
