Somewhat of a Fruit Leather Miracle

One sunny day this June, we made strawberry apple fruit leather.

Now getting from here:

to there,

was somewhat of a miracle.

Here's my photo tutorial.
I followed the recipe from Vintage Chica.

First, rinse

Next, chop
Then, place in a sauce pan and cook down with water
(I added apples to extend the recipe.)
Blend!
Spread and bake for 5 hours at 170 degrees
(or your oven's lowest temp.)
Roll it up. Now at this point, the despair set in.
Although it was delicious, our fruit would not separate from the wax paper I had used (instead of plastic wrap.) We were eating more paper then fruit and I thought it was undercooked and mushy in the center. The edges were hard and cracked. Next time, I would cook it less than my 6 hours. I now know more mushy like thick jam is fine and less hard edges are better.At this point, I put it in a glass jar in little ita's snack drawer and thought, "Oh well, we've got a yummy activity that takes a lot of time and patience."

Then, with much surprise, we opened it the next day to find the fruit had moistened enough in the jar to pull away from the wax paper and it was perfect, east to peal real fruit leather!So now I say, making fruit leather is flexible (as it should be) and even if it doesn't bake or dry evenly, it all works out great in the end. Enjoy the fruit season!