Oh fall.... I love the red, yellow and orange leaves on the trees (along with the leaves on the ground making the crunch crunch noise as you walk on them). The dried corn stalks and the gourdes, the crisp fall air. It all puts me in my happy place.
Especially the pumpkins. I love pumpkins. The way they look, the way they smell, and most of all the way they taste.
This year I got a couple adorable little organic pie pumpkins in the last box of the summer farm share we participated in. I put them out as decorations for a few weeks, then finally cooked them down before they could go bad. Now, what to do with all that delicious pumpkin puree I made?
Firstly, I made some pumpkin pie poptarts. All I had was whole wheat flour, so they turned out a bit grainy, but everyone loved the filling. I had a lot of puree left over even after those, so I used the same seasonings, along with a few other ingredients, and made the poptart filling into fruit leather with my brand new dehydrator. It was a smash hit! Everyone loves it! So now to share the recipe.
One batch of this is enough to fill 1 1/2 of my 10x11 inch dehydrator sheets. So I usually make a double batch and fill 3 sheets.
Pumpkin Pie Fruit Leather
1 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 can sweetened condensed coconut milk
1/4 cup coconut sugar (sub brown sugar if you don't have coconut)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp allspice
2 tbsp shredded coconut
1 tbsp dried cranberries, finely chopped
Coconut Oil
1. Combine all ingredients except the coconut and cranberries and stir well.
2. Add coconut and cranberries and fold in.
3. Use coconut oil to grease the fruit leather sheets for a dehydrator. Then pour mixture on and spread out into a 1/4 inch thick layer for leathery pieces, or thinner for crispy pumpkin pie chips. It will shrink as it dehydrates.
4. Put in a food dehydrator 8-24 hours at around 134 degrees for leather, or 155ish for chips. Check after 8 hours to see if it is becoming the consistency you are looking for.
5. Take out of the dehydrator and cut into smaller pieces, I usually use a pizza cutter. Store in baggies, or other air tight container.
