{homemade dehydrated fruit}

i need a dehydrator. it just feels like a really good investment to make, and you know me i’m all about DIY in the kitchen! my former roommate let me borrow hers when i was living there, and i became an insta-fan! there’s something about dehydrated fruit – particularly apples – that i just love!

and these little honeycrisps steal the show, no doubt.

side note – what’s up with the bigass apples lately? have you noticed how huge they seem to be getting?! the apples in the above foto i bought in a bag and they were just the right size, like apples from a tree… but sometimes i see this apples in the store that weigh like a pound and i’m thinking, “i can’t eat that in one sitting!” plus, to be honest, i’ve just never been one to eat apples. i’m not one for hand-held fruit, i can’t explain why. i like the texture of the dehydrated apples much more, too!

and who can resist mangos?! especially when they are on sale! this is a “common mango”… stay tuned for a feature of one of my favourite kind of mangos coming up soon. it’s different than this one!

apple-corers rule.

makes it SO easy!

save the middle and throw it in your next smoothie! 😉

it’s like a flower!

i sliced my wedges down – on my wish list is a mandolin for thin-slicing things like this… one day, soon!

i read online and in the pamphlet that you can dip apples or other kinds of fruit in citric acid or lemon juice prior to dehydrating mostly to avoid loss of colour. i’ve tried it both ways and i must say it’s much better without the lemon juice – it made them too tart! and believe me, i love tart – it was just too much with the honeycrisp, as they are already somewhat like sweet-tarts 🙂

there were 4 trays in my dehydrator so i put the apples on the bottom 2 and then cut up the mango…

peeled it first… then just hacked away. i have no idea how to properly cut these things, i always make a mess no matter what… who cares!

piled those mango slices on top… after eating a few… then stuck them in the dehydrator for about 12 hours…

i am a fan of white noise, so i just ran this while i slept… it has a nice hum to it…

the next morning, after i have a smoothie of some kind, my fruit was all ready to go. they say to just check for any moisture in the fruit when you break it in half. want to make sure it’s all dried up in order to avoid it spoiling or molding. mine didn’t last long enough to worry about that…

nature’s candy.

do you own a dehydrator? if so how often do you use it and what kind of things do you make?! thanks for reading!

Tags: color, colorful, colour, dehydrated food, dehydrated fruit, dehydrator, DIY, easy, eating, food, fruits, health, healthy eating, healthy snacks, nature's candy, organics