With A Grain of Salt: Fruit Leather. It's easy! No really!

I made a new friend recently who has been "blessed" with an overabundance of grapes on her backyard grapevine. As she was describing the difficulties of storing and processing enough grapes to keep the Vatican in wine for a year (my words, not hers), I was busily pintresting "grape projects" and the one that caught my eye was directions for making fruit leather. Few ingredients, not too many steps, the person promises easy delicious results, so I offer to take a bag off of my friend's hands and give it a shot.

If you don't want to read all my wandering explanations and just want to make some gosh darned fruit leather without reading a novel, then scroll to the bottom for the simplified picture book edition. Or maybe pick a different blog to follow. :D

It is simple. None of the steps required anything I didn't already have in my kitchen. I didn't have to buy anything. Even if I had bought any of these items specifically for this project, all of them are inexpensive and very useful for many other things.

NOW: It does take a while. Picking the stems off a zillion grapes is kind of a pain. Letting the pulp simmer till you've decided enough liquid has boiled out is tiresome. It will be baking for a loooooong time. But none if it takes any special skill or magic kitchen juju and the results are very much worth it!

Ingredients:
Grapes (1 big ole grocery bag full)
Water (2 cups)
Sugar (2 tbs optional)

Step 1: Stem and rinse your grapes.

If you buy grapes from the store, they will be much easier and come right off the stem. If you are lucky enough to have a friend with a vine or industrious enough to have grown them yourself, you'll probably have a variety with more delicate stems which require a little more work. This is your only chance to get rid of the stems so do it now!

Step 2: Smash 'em.

Pour all the grapes into a big pot. Add the water and sugar. About the sugar. 2 table spoons in all those grapes is so little that it probably didn't need to be added at all. Now smash with a potato smasher till all the grapes are broken. Don't think mashed potatoes. Think back to that grape you stepped on a while back. Smashed grapes. Don't over think it. Just smash till you don't feel like smashing anymore.

Step 3: Boil for a while.

I boiled for 20 ish minutes. I turned on the stove, put the kiddo in his jammies, read him some stories, sang his bedtime song, put him down, and then turned the pot off.

Step 4: Strain.

Pour the pot over a strainer into a big bowl, a pitcher or another pot. This is your grapejuice. It's soooooo good! Resist the urge to smush the stuff in the strainer to get extra juice out. You will get plenty just by letting it all sit and drip out and if you smush it, you'll get pulpy juice. Pulpy juice isn't bad, but that pulp could be making more fruit leather!

(oops.)

Looks nasty, I know, but this magically turns into a delicious treat!

Step 5: Puree

Dump all the pulp in the blender and blend it till it's as smooth as possible.

Too Wet

When it's just right, it will start to stick to the pot.

Step 6: Simmer

Dump the blended pulp back into the pot and simmer it low till all the liquid is gone. The longer you let the pulp strain (step 4) the less you'll be simmering. You'll know it's ready when there are no longer any puddles of liquid floating on the top.

Step 7: Bake

Pour what is now a nasty greyish sludge out onto a silpat mat on a baking sheet or parchment paper and spread it around with a spatula. The thinner you spread it, the faster it will cook. I just tried to be sure I couldn't see any of the baking sheet through the goo. It will magically turn a lovely grapey shade of deep purple while baking.

The instructions I read were to bake at 140 for 8-12 hours. My oven doesn't go that low, so I baked it at 170 for 4 hours and then shut it off, left it in the oven, and went to bed. The next morning voila! Fruit leather! It will actually taste like the grape candy flavor I always thought was just someones half hearted attempt at reproducing "grape" as a flavor. Turns out, that's actually what grapes taste like when you cook 'em! Who knew?

I'll be honest right here and tell you that my kid took one look at it and threw the plate on the floor. Wouldn't touch it, even to pick it up and put the plate back on the table. That day he participated in his first successful timeout! Hooray for small victories!

SHORT CUT TO LESS WORDY INSTRUCTIONS:

Ingredients:
Grapes
Water (2cups)
Sugar (2 tbs )
Step 1: Stem Grapes