Fruit leather is a quick way to preserve a surplus of fruit. I neither use sugar nor Stevia and don’t have a freezer (by choice), so I dry a lot of fruit from the garden and nature . I had too many raspberries in the garden and also bilberries picked the other week in Hurdal. I just boiled and crushed the fruit with a little water and then poured it as a thin layer into an oven tray and dried at about 50C in an oven for a few hours! This is much quicker than drying the whole berries. The leather can then be kept in a cool dry place for several years. Delicious as a goody to offer visitors!
I used an old red raspberry, originally from the old railway station garden in Malvik, an old Norwegian yellow raspberry and “White Russian” (yellow with a white blush):
Wanted!! I’m pretty sure I’ve lost these really tasty raspberries which I called “Apricot” and spread to various folk back in the days of Sjølbergeren (a self-sufficiency magazine here in Norway).
I originally got these through a visit to the Kvithamar research station in Stjørdal which is quite near here…they were breeding yellow raspberries (one of them that has become popular was eventually called Varnes). We were allowed a taste, a seed trapped in my teeth and when I got home I sowed it ;) The resultant fruit was much more tasty than Varnes (bred for a number of other characters too, not just taste) and I wanted others to experience it…but now I don’t have it any more, so please if you still have it, please can I have a bit back?
ApricotberriesApricotberries with black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis)Sitting under my birch tree one day in 2009 and the tree was offering me free nutty tasting birch seed on my apricotberry porridge!
A bit of a glut of fruit in my garden. I’ve therefore been drying raspberries and currants :) At the bottom are the dried fruit, also bilberries and saskatoons!
The red variety is a tasty disease resistent variety we found escaped from the old Malvik railway station garden below the house. There are two yellow varieties, one just received as gulbringebær (yellow raspberry), the lighter coloured one that is almost white when unripe is called “White Russian”The red variety is a tasty disease resistent variety we found escaped from the old Malvik railway station garden below the house. There are two yellow varieties, one just received as gulbringebær (yellow raspberry), the lighter coloured one that is almost white when unripe is called “White Russian”
Redcurrants / ripsRedcurrants / rips
Dried bilberries / blåbær
Dried saskatoon berries (Amelanchier) / søtmispel
Dried red raspberries / bringebær
Dried redcurrants /rips
Dried yellow raspberries….White Russian are the lighter coloured berries
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
