Apricot Leather

My Grandma Moeller used to make apricot leather all the time. I have memories of the trays of leather with the netting over the top, so the bugs wouldn't get at it. Well, our apricot tree produced fruit this year (which it hasn't done in quite a while) and so I decided that I wanted to try to make some leather. The apricots have started to fall, and I hate to see them go to waste. My mom didn't have my grandma's recipe, so I looked up a few recipes online, and combined them to make my own.

Here are some of the apricots that we picked from our tree, ready to be washed and sliced.

I ended up with about 12 cups of sliced apricots.

The recipes that I found online all varied somewhat in the amount of sugar and what other ingredients to add. Some added a lot of sugar, other a little or honey. I decided to use 2/3 cups sugar and 1/3 pineapple juice for the 12 cups of apricots.

I put them on the stove and heated it up until it simmered and cooked it for about 10 minutes.

Here they are all bubbly and yummy!

My mom had my grandma's old pot that she was use to puree the apricots (all the recipes online said to just puree them, so I think that I food processor or blender would work just fine). I used my grandmother's pot, which prevents the skins from getting in the leather.

Afterwards, you end up with a pretty colored puree that looks like this.

I transferred the puree to baking sheets covered in plastic wrap and put them in the oven on the lowest setting with the door open a little. I've heard that gas ovens work well for this, because you can just use the pilot light. My grandma used to put them outside, but I didn't have any netting to keep the bugs out. In the afternoon, it warmed up outside so I moved them to Daniel's truck, where they could bake, but not get eaten by bugs. I think the car works well, because it acts like an oven, but it doesn't take any electricity and it doesn't heat your house up.

After about 6-8 hours, you end up with yummy fruit leather that you can roll up like a fruit roll-up. I am hoping to make another batch or two before all the apricots are gone. It is yummy!!