Foraged Fruit Leather from Native Hands

We return to the wisdom of Native Hands with this simple seasonal foraging recipe from Ruby.

Here’s the recipe for one of my favourite combos: apple and blackberry fruit leather. I like to use dessert apples as a base, as they give ‘body’ & then no added sweetener is needed.

Ingredients (approximate, you can vary this according to taste):

6 dessert apples

4 handfuls of blackberries (shake off any bugs but don’t wash the berries).

Method:

Peel core & slice the apples thinly. Put about 1cm of water in a pan & add the apples & berries. Simmer gently, just til the apples are soft. Mash it all up together (if you don’t like blackberry pips you could push it all through a sieve). If you like a raw option, you could just put it all in a food processor, having cored the apples first.

Line a cookie tray with baking parchment & spread the fruit mash to a depth of about ½ cm. Put the tray in a very low fan oven (or in a food dehydrator if you have one… or even leave out in the breeze on a warm day) until it’s leathery. This can take upwards of 12 hours but check it from time to time. When it’s dried enough, cut or tear into pieces & store in an airtight container.

Read on here for the full article and further options on using other berries, hawthorn haws, sloes and wild plums to make your leather.  Happy foraging!