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Saturday, September 8, 2012

Fruit Leather

Fruit Leather - healthy, with no preservatives




Fresh fruit (apricots, peaches, berries, apples, pears,)
Water
Lemon juice or pineapple juice
(3 Tablespoons Lemon Juice or 1/4 C Pineapple Juice)

Wash the fruit. If you working with stone fruit take out the pits, chop the fruit. If working with apples or pears, peel and core them, then chop. Place the fruit in a blender or a food processor with the lemon juice or pineapple juice and puree. (Feel free to mix fruit – like peach/pear, raspberry/pear….etc) Note: when working with berries like strawberries and raspberries – strain the puree through a couple of layers of cheesecloth to remove some of the seeds.
Taste the fruit before proceeding. Note how sweet the fruit is. If very sweet you will not need to add any sugar. If still a little tart, you may need to add some sugar, honey or agave (another option is to use jam to sweeten).
The purée should be very smooth.
Line a rimmed baking sheet with sturdy plastic wrap (the kind that is microwave safe). Pour out the purée into the lined baking sheet to about an 1/8 to 1/4 inch thickness.
Place the baking sheet in the oven; try to keep any plastic wrap from touch the sides of the oven or the oven racks. Also try to make sure that the plastic wrap hasn't folded back over on top of the purée. If this happens, the purée won't dry out. Heat the oven to a low 140°F. If you have a convection setting, use it, it will speed up the process and help dry out the purée. Let dry in the oven like this for as long as it takes for the purée to dry out and form fruit leather. We usually keep it in the oven overnight, so about 8-12 hours. The fruit leather is ready when it is no longer sticky, but has a smooth surface.
­ If you have a food dehydrator, follow the manufacturer’s directions. Some suggestions are to put the tray in a Barbeque grill, and leaving covered, in the sun all day. My Mom used to make it the traditional way of tenting the tray with a screen and leave it outside in the sun on a hot day.
When the fruit leather is ready, you can peel it up from the plastic wrap. To store it, roll it in its plastic wrap, put it in an airtight container and store in the refrigerator or freezer. My Mom used to cut them into 1” strips – the precursor to Fruit by the foot®
Yield: 3-4 cups of fruit yield about one baking sheet of fruit leather.

Have fun cookin'
Cyndi

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Zucchini Orange (or Lemon) Bread

Zucchini Orange (or Lemon) Bread


As everyone knows zucchini's are easy to grow and one plant produces oodles of zucchinis and 1 zucchini can make lots of zucchini bread. Well Zucchini bread is yummy on it's own but I found this recipe via (you guessed it) Pinterest nancycreative.com - thought I'd give it a try - OH WOW, delish... 
Now the creative side of me thought Hmmmm Lemons - Oranges - why not spin it and try it with oranges - orange zest, orange juice - OH MY GOODNESS......

Here is my version - Check out the link for hers 


ORANGE-ZUCCHINI LOAF WITH ORANGE GLAZE
Makes one 9×5″ loaf

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
Juice of 1 Small Orange (or 2 Tablespoons Orange juice)
Zest of 1 Small Orange
1 cup grated zucchini (you don’t need to peel the zucchini before grating it unless you are trying to hide it.)
Preheat oven to 35o°. Grease and flour a 9×5″ loaf pan; set aside.
In large bowl, blend flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
In your stand mixer bowl, beat 2 eggs well, then add canola oil and sugar, and blend well. Then add the buttermilk, orange juice, and orange zest and zucchini and stir until evenly distributed in mixture. Add the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl slowly and on low (or you’ll have a mess to clean up) and blend everything together, but don’t over mix.
Pour batter into prepared 9×5″ loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack and cool completely. While loaf is cooling, you can make the glaze…
ORANGE GLAZE
1 cup powdered sugar
Juice of 1 Small Orange (or 2 Tablespoons Orange juice)
In small bowl, mix powdered sugar and lemon juice until well blended. Spoon the glaze over cooled loaf. Let glaze set, serve.
 Adapted from NancyCreative.com

Have fun Cookin'
Cyndi

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