3rd Anniversary traditional Gift

Last week Kyle and I celebrated our 3rd wedding Anniversary! It was pretty low key but at least we were able to spend the whole day together as we had an appointment in Calgary at the US Consulate. 

After our appointment,  we went to a bakery downtown where we enjoyed a slice of salted caramel cheesecake. Side note: a friend of mine and I recently started an Instagram account where we feature Bakeries we visit. Check it out @edmontonbakeries

Then we went to Deerfoot City mall to get dinner at Chronic Tacos (so yeah, we had dessert first) which is Kyle's favourite restaurant. He is super excited that they have started opening up locations in Canada. 

Last year, I wrote a blog post about how I follow the tradition of getting "traditional Anniversary gifts". Read it here and see what I did for our first and second Anniversary. 

The third Anniversary gift is leather. I asked Kyle what he would like that was leather but he started off by giving non-serious answers that involved a hypothetical motorcycle before confirming that there wasn't anything he could think of that he needed or wanted. 

My friend ( the same one I visit Bakeries with) suggested fruit leather. Genius idea! 

I borrowed a dehydrator and looked around my kitchen to see what we had. I found a bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer and a jar of applesauce in the food storage. 

I read a few recipes and I feel like what I did was simpler than the directions I read. I hope this will be the simplest recipe you can find: 

- put 5 cups of fruit in the blender (I used 3 cups of frozen blueberries that had been mostly thawed and 2 cups of apple sauce). 

- puree the fruit*

-spread on to dehydrator trays or onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. 

- in a dehydrator cook at mid heat overnight or about 8 hours. If you don't have a dehydrator, spread on the cookie sheet and bake at low heat for about the same amount of time. 

- You can check periodically to see how it is setting. Once it is no longer sticky, the fruit leather is ready. 

- Peal off or cut into strips (if lined with parchment paper, you can cut backed with parchment paper. 

- I rolled up each strip and tied with twine. I bought a big roll of it years ago when making a Thanksgiving turkey that I am pretty sure I have a lifetime supply.

*most recipes include adding a sweetener like honey but I didn't and felt like it was sweet enough. 

They turned out great and made for a yummy road trip snack. 

Have you ever made fruit leather? What flavours did you come up with?