Wild Lingonberry Leather Stripes
Homemade berry and fruit “leather” or stripes (“remmit”) are a perfect healthy snack for children and for grown-ups, too. Nobody needs sugary candy after trying these, but a warning, these are equally addictive!
Berry and fruit stripes are a perfect way to store fresh berries in autumn, but you can also use frozen ones. Berry leather is really easy to make, you basically just make your favourite smoothie and put it into oven overnight.
Combine the berries and the fruits in a blender and process until it’s smooth (it’s important to get as smooth texture as possible). Discard solid particles if some remain. If you used frozen berries, make sure you melt them properly first. Pour spread into a baking tray using over baking paper. I used silicone baking mat, which turned out to be really useful. Pour the mixture in the middle of the oven tray and spread evenly to make a thin and smooth layer. Then the oven or plant dehydrator does the rest!
Bake the mixture until it’s dry, but not too dry. Berry leather is best when it’s still juicy and flexible and this requires long baking time at a low temperature (maximum 50 Celsius). Also you want to keep the temperature low in order to preserve the valuable nutrients of the berries and fruits. The exact cooking time depends on the thickness of the mixture. I baked these overnight approx 7 hours in an oven in 50 Celsius-degrees.
Once the mixture is cooled you can cut it into strips and roll. If you used baking paper, use scissors to cut and then remove the paper afterwards.
I first tried using just wild berries, but the flavour was really intense, you might want to mix berries with fruits such as apple and pear especially if you serve these to sweet tooth kids :). This recipe is for a half an oven tray mixture.
Lingonberry-Rowanberry Stripes with Xylitol
- 1dl of lingonberries
- 0,5 dl of rowanberries
- 1,5 dl of unsweetened 100% applesauce (I used Piltti’s baby food, but if I would have found Finnish apples I’d preferred just blending fresh ones)
- Lingonberry Xylitol sprinkled on top (or roll stripes on a plate with birch sugar)
To learn more, try book a wild herb workshop with our Helsinki Wildfoods team and dive deeper into the Nordic METTÄ, forest!