Sometimes I Make 100% Natural Desserts (Without Sugar!)!

One of my favorite things in a dessert is fruit.  Don't get me wrong - I am an adult and female, so I do love dark chocolate, but there is something fun about making a sweet treat using fruit.  I made this easy apple galette a few times last fall:

I had three people in mind making the 100% fruit, nothing added mango fruit roll-ups - me (part of the joy of cooking to me is making something relatively healthy that I will enjoy), Jeffy (it is also fun to cook for adorable husbands who can take treats easily with them while biking!), and, of course, my Lisa-buddy who loves her fruit and veggies and anything that seems like a special treat!

I made it the evening I also cooked this butternut squash soup.  Apparently orange food was all the rage that day, even though it took so long to make the treat that Jeffy did not get to try it until the next day!

This recipe is literally nothing but the actual fruit "fruit roll-up".  I used mangoes because I love them and I was able to find three fantastic ones at Trader Joe's.  Once you have acquired the delicious looking mangoes, you have to somehow get out the actual fruit.  Yes, the traditional method of cutting the fruit close to the pit into halves and then scoring it with a knife not quite through the skin and finally popping out the fruit into lovely cubes is fantastic when one wants to snack on some mango (I just enjoyed some before writing this post, but sadly little Lisa was suspicious of this fruit she had enjoyed just one week ago in a different form!).  However, if you want to use as much of the fruit as possible and you do not need lovely cubes because you a puréeing it in the blender/food processor anyway, I suggest using a peeler and then cutting it into bigger chunks like below.

Peeling the skin from the mango ensures you get more fruit and saves you several knife strokes!  (Pardon the terrible manicure, I am going this weekend, I promise!)

My lovely larger and non-uniform mango chunks prior to blending. 

Once you have peeled, sliced, and tossed your mangoes into the blender....BLEND IT!

The three mangoes I used yielded about four cups of sweet, delicious, NATURAL purée.

After blending, you want to spread the purée on one or two parchment paper (or SilPat) covered cookie sheets with a rim on them so the purée stays contained.  The purée should only be about 1/8 to 1/4" thick.  I spread it evenly using a spoon, but if you have an offset spatula, that would work best.    Then you pop them into the oven at the very low temperature of 175 degrees.  My oven knob does not even have any numbers below 200, so I started by pre-heating it at 200, then reducing it slightly.  What you are actually doing to the fruit is dehydrating it, not cooking it.  Of course, if you have a fancy dehydrator, then this could be done in that I bet....but this is for regular folks with tiny kitchens!  You cook it long and low for about four hours (mine was slightly thicker, so I recommend checking at three hours to see if it is done), checking it every so often to make sure it is dehydrating and not cooking through, until it becomes glossy and sticky to the touch like one of those less-than-natural concoctions they sell in stores.

It will look something like this:

Dehydration complete!

After it is done dehydrating, you use a spatula to lift the fruit leather from the parchment paper and place it onto a fresh piece of parchment paper.  Using a pair of clean kitchen scissors, cut the whole thing, paper and all, into even strips.

Place onto fresh parchment paper and cut into strips about 1 to 1-1/2" thick.

The next step is actually rolling the treats into fun roll-ups!  I made mine thick and probably could have used a second cookie sheet (our oven is very small, so our cookie sheets are small, so this may not be the case for you with the deluxe ovens out there) to make a few more treats.

The completed roll-ups look like this:

Neat-ishly rolled for consumption!

After my success with the butternut squash soup sharing with little Lisa, we shared a mango fruit roll-up and she loved it!

"It's de-wish-us!"

So I batted a thousand with the orange food that day....felt pretty awesome!


Below is the super simple recipe - remember you have to dedicate a few hours of dehydrating time, so make sure you do not attempt to start this at 7 in the evening on a weeknight!  I plan on attempting this over the weekend using strawberries!

No Sugar Added Mango Fruit Rolls/Fruit Leather

Ingredients:
-Three large mangoes 

Directions:
1.  Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees or to 200 and reduce to just below 200 if your oven knob only goes to 200 like mine!
2.  Peel and slice mangoes getting as much of the fruit as possible.  
3.  Place fruit in blender and purée until smooth.
4.  Prepare a rimmed baking sheet (or two) with parchment paper or a SilPat.  
5.  Spread the purée on the baking sheet(s) to about 1/8" thick using a spoon, offset spatula, or any other tool you have to make it pretty smooth.  
6.  Place the baking sheet(s) in the oven for three to four hours, checking on it periodically to ensure the fruit is dehydrating and not cooking. 
7.  When the fruit is tacky to the touch, remove it from the oven and use a spatula to take it off the fruit leather.  Place it on a new piece of parchment paper.
8.  Use scissors to cut the paper and fruit together into strips, then gently roll them!
9.  Enjoy!