Homemade Blueberry Fruit Leather

Last week I acquired 140lb of blueberries. 140lb!!! Now what does a person do with 140lb of blueberries?!

After giving away 50 or so pounds to friends and family, I decided to make blueberry syrup for Christmas gifts.  (Watch out near and dear ones... better start making pancakes!).  My dear sister and wonderful husband stayed up late with me and we made syrup.  36-500ml jars of it, to be exact!  By 2 a.m. I was done.  I mean, I was done; there were still more blueberries.  I tossed the rest of the blueberries in the freezer and went to bed.  We have syrup for a lifetime, it seems.  Talk about amazing flavour, by the way.  You'll never go back to Aunt Jemima and her high fructose corn syrup again!  But that's another story...

After cooking and straining the berries to make syrup you are left with a thick pile of dark colored blueberry skins, seeds and mush.  What to do with this nice-smelling sludge?  My husband added some sugar and spread it out on the parchment-lined dehydrator shelves.  (I think it would still have been great with no sugar at all.  These were sweet blueberries!)   Several days later we had the most incredible tasting blueberry fruit leather I have ever eaten!  The kids can't get enough of it.  It makes a fabulous snack for school, home, the office, hiking...

And best of all, we were able to use ALL of the blueberries that were left over from the syrup-making.  There was no waste.  The poor, unfortunate chickens didn't get to eat that treat this time!  And no refrigeration or freezing is required to store these snacks. 

If you have a dehydrator, give it a try!  Additive-free, all natural, and from unsprayed blueberries, these fruit strips have Sun Rype Fruit-To-Go beat by a long shot.