Don't Throw Out Overripe Fruit — Make Fruit Leather Instead

If you're trying to think up ways to avoid wasting all that gorgeous summer fruit, you're not alone. Sometimes, it feels like you turn your back on fruit for two seconds too long and the whole pile becomes mush. But don't throw out your fruit, even if it's hit a point where it's too ripe for you to eat it by itself. Instead, use it to make fruit leather: a dehydrated, delicious way to get all the taste and nutrients of your fresh fruit without having to worry about it rotting away on your counter.

You can make fruit leather in plenty of different ways. If you're trying to decide whether or not a dehydrator is right for you, this is one more reason you can add to the "go buy it" pile. But if you don't have one and have no intention to buy one, you can use your oven instead. First, clean, cut, and cook the fruit. You want to add about ½ cup of water for every 4 cups of chopped fruit and cook it on low heat for around 10 minutes or until your fruit is nice and soft. Puree that baby, add seasonings and sugar to your desired taste, then pour the puree onto a lined baking sheet. Set it to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and leave your fruit to bake low and slow for at least 8 hours, but overnight works well, too.

While you can definitely make sheets of fruit leather one by one, we suggest trying out fun and fruity combinations by mixing purees together. Cherries and raspberries are one of our favorite mixes, but we also enjoy apple and banana, especially with cinnamon and honey added to the mix. Plum, peach, and pear make for a refreshingly sweet treat, but you can't go wrong with strawberries and peaches, either. You can either combine the fruit fully in a puree, or make two separate purees and swirl them together without fully mixing them together on the baking tray.

If you're trying to figure out good uses for all this fruit, we have 18 recipes to showcase fresh fruit. Once dried, homemade fruit leather would serve as an excellent addition to a pickled grape charcuterie tray, or you could enjoy it with a sweet blueberry switchel drink to wash it all down. When you aren't worried about throwing out even the ripest of fruits, you'll find a whole world of deliciously fruity possibilities just waiting for you to give them a try.