Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 291 kcal | 83 kcal |
| Protein | 2.7 g | 0.8 g |
| Fat | 1 g | 0.3 g |
| saturated | 0.2 g | 0 g |
| Carbohydrate | 60.5 g | 17.2 g |
| sugars | 56.6 g | 16 g |
| Fibre | 13.4 g | 3.8 g |
| Sodium | 4 mg | 1 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 13 small-sized gala apples, peeled, cored, chopped
- 6 dates, roughly chopped
- 960 g orange (about 6 medium), juiced
- 2 tablespoons grated orange zest
- 3 1/4 teaspoons vanilla
Instructions
- Peel and core the apples and drop them into the orange juice as you go. Apple browns within minutes of meeting air, and the juice is already in the recipe doing that job.
- Blend the apple, date, orange juice, zest and vanilla until no flecks of date are left. A date that has only been chopped shows up in the finished sheet as a dark sticky spot that never sets.
- Take a spoonful and taste it while it is still in the blender jug. There is no added sugar here, so a flat batch of apples gives a flat leather, and another spoon of zest is the fix.
- Pour it onto a solid fruit sheet and spread it to an even, thin layer with an offset spatula rather than the back of a spoon. Ridges left by a spoon dry into hard lines that the sheet tears along.
- Dry at 57 °C for 6 hours. Keep the dial below 43 °C if the batch has to stay raw, and expect the lower setting to add several hours to the run.
- It is finished when the surface has gone matt and a fingertip in the middle meets a slight tack but comes away dry. A sheet that is still glossy in the centre has water sitting under the skin.
- Peel it while it is warm, working from one corner with your palm flat against the sheet. Let it cool on the mat and it grips hard enough to tear.
- Roll the strips in baking paper and keep them in a jar somewhere dark. They hold a month in the cupboard and several in the freezer — the orange oil in the zest fades first, so the older rolls taste mostly of apple.
