Would you like to learn how to make healthy and fun fruit snacks at home?
Well, today on WTF, we're going to show you how to do just that by
using Ultra-Stik to make a homemade fruit by the foot and fruit roll-ups.
Hello, and welcome to WTF, where we transform food here in the
Modernist Pantry test kitchen.
I'm chef Scott Guerin.
I'm Janie Wang, one of the owners of Modernist Pantry.
Here on WTF, every week we talk about unique ingredients and
techniques, and show you recipes that you can do in your kitchen.
So remember, subscribe and ring the bell and you'll get notified
of our episodes when they come out.
And this week, we are going to be showing you how to do a DIY fruit leather,
or as it's more commonly known, a fruit roll-up or a fruit by the foot.
So we're going to show you how to make is this, I believe strawberry
and pineapple flavors, and it's really, really easy and really fun.
So we can't wait to get into it.
And I think where we want to start, Scott, is maybe the, what exactly
goes into a fruit leather, you know, obviously fruit, but what else is there?
So in the most simple sense, it can just be fruit and an ingredient
that makes it leathery like that.
So what we're using here today is Ultra-Stik and Ultra-Stik
is a type of a corn syrup.
It's a dry corn syrup.
But it's not like the corn syrup you know, where, you know, added to a
lot of things just to make it sweet.
This helps make it very sticky and tacky.
Yeah.
One of the things that we love about Ultra-Stik, and the reason why we
brought it into our catalog like a few months ago or something like that, was
because it was super great for sticking like toppings onto bagels and all kinds
of things and making granola bars.
And we thought this is really fun.
And you had the idea, like why not?
Let's try it in the fruit leather.
And before that, you know, obviously people have been making fruit
leather for a while and they were using mostly pure crisp film, which
we do carry here in the pantry.
What makes Ultra-Stik kind of better than those ingredients when you tried it out?
So, the best part about it is some of those pure coats, sometimes
you have to heat it and whatnot.
And whenever you do that, you're going to lose some of the flavor
of the fruit that you're making.
This is so simple that I can just add it directly in, blend it, and it's done.
It's ready to go.
It's works in about 30% of the total weight of the product.
So I do for this demo, I'll do 600 grams of pineapple and I'll do
200 grams of the Ultra-Stik, but you can do much smaller, right.
This is just for, for demo purposes, but it's very simple.
You just mix it in and it's ready.
You don't have to worry about, you know, blending it for a certain
amount of time or heating and then potentially changing the flavor.
Well, I can't wait to see it.
And it's really fun because obviously we're both parents and it's such a
great snack, seems like a really easy way to do something fun and healthy
with your kids, get them to eat fruit.
But then also have fun, teach them a little bit of science.
It's, it's pretty quick too, because you can make these, if you have a
dehydrator, like we have here, you can make them overnight, so you can make
it a, you know, the night before and in the morning, they're ready to go.
You know, kids are impatient, so I'm just going to add in the
pineapple directly into my blender.
Okay.
Do you need any added sugar in this recipe at all?
No.
The Ultra-Stik has a little bit of sweetness to it.
If you find that you're using something very acidic, then yeah.
You can add a little bit of sugar to it.
Just know that sometimes when you're adding sugar, you could be holding
onto a little bit more hydration, so that will increase the drying time.
Okay.
And I think when we talk about acidity, a lot of times when we
talk about recipes here, we say, "Hey, watch out for the acidity.
It's not going to work if it's too acidic."
Are there any acidity concerns with making fruit leather?
No.
Not, not with Ultra-Stik.
Not at all.
So you can just make the fruit leather right away with the Ultra-Stik.
You don't have to worry about pH or anything like that.
Okay.
It's really easy to use.
So I'm just going to blend this up.
And I want it to get into a puree first, before I add in the Ultra-Stik.
Just so I can, I don't want any to stick to the sides.
Okay.
And no adding water, no adding additional fruit juice, nothing.
So I found I've made it a few different times, and if I'm using something like
a mango that's not quite ripe, that will have a little bit starch in there.
And it'll kind of, when I added in the Ultra-Stik, it will become very thick.
Then you could add a little bit of water, but for this pineapple, strawberry,
super high hydration, you know, fruits.
It's easy to use.
Great.
So I have this going just on low.
I'm going to start adding my Ultra-Stik.
And this seems like a lot, but this is also a very big recipe.
So if you're making a smaller recipe, like one-third of this, it's obviously
not going to be 200 grams of Ultra-Stik.
And Ultra-Stik is very light.
So I'm just going to just spoon it in.
Notice I'm not worrying about sprinkling slowly or anything like that, but you
will notice this is going to thicken up.
You can already tell it is with the way the blender is reacting to it.
And that's good because it's going to make it easier, too.
When you spread it out, it'll be easier to keep it even because it's not too thin.
It's not going to run too much.
The blender is protesting.
Okay.
And do you need to leave this overnight for it to thicken up,
or does it hydrate right away, and you can spread it right away?
It hydrates right away.
So once I get this in here, I might have to use the spatula a
little bit to get around the sides.
That's going to be good.
It's ready to go.
So that's it.
Once it's mixed in there and there's a little bit on the side,
you don't have to worry about that.
Right from here, I can then pour.
That was falling in.
Hm.
Is this an ingredient where you kind of have to.
But I know you just talked about, if you had the mango, you might add a little
bit of water in, is there some kind of consistency, like kind of, I feel like
I'm seeing kind of a pancake-battery consistency, is that what they're
looking for when they make their own?
If you're using something like mango, it's going to be very thick.
Something like a pineapple and strawberry is going to be this consistency.
So yeah, you want to go around this consistency, but you want to keep
it as close to that 30% of the total weight of the recipe as possible.
So very simple.
I'm just going to get it on here and I'm just going to spread it out.
If you find that there's a lot of seeds and you don't like the seeds, which I
don't mind them, you can obviously strain it out, just pass it through like a 250
micron Superbag, or something like that.
Okay, cool.
Which is a whole 'nother episode.
If you want to find that, it's in the links in the description below.
Okay.
And if you do okay.
So once you get it to your desired thickness, obviously we're going to
pop it into this Excalibur dehydrator.
And I'm sure if some people have dehydrators at home, is there like a
recommended temperature and recommended length of time to put this in?
Yeah.
Between 125 and 135 Fahrenheit and between 10 and 12 hours.
At around 10, it's like perfect for the fruit leather.
If you want to pick up one of these, you can kind of show
off the, the texture of them.
This one here is really nice.
We just made this one overnight.
It was beautiful.
When it gets a little bit too dry, then it'll get crispy around the edges.
And that's more like fruit glass.
So if I want to take this and I wanted to spread it very
thin, you can roll it up easy.
If I want to spread this very thin, you could just make fruit glass.
So when you pull it off, it'll be a sheet.
You break it into like nice shards for garnish or something on a dessert.
Okay.
So it's very simple.
I'm going to place this directly in here.
Then here's one that we made yesterday, actually last night, right before we left.
And so yeah, around the edges, it'll be a little crispy 'cause they were
thinner, but it should pull easily off.
That's the sign of a good fruit leather.
If it's sticky on the center, just give it a little bit more time in the dehydrator.
It will free itself up.
And I really, really love how easy it is because, you know, when we, when
we used to do them with the pure co and the crisp film, sometimes people
would write in because they were having problems with their recipe.
They couldn't get it to, you know, like dry properly.
And this seems pretty much foolproof in terms of how easy it is to work with.
It's incredibly easy.
Just put it in there with the, put whatever fruit in there
with the Ultra-Stik, and then place it into the dehydrator.
That's it.
That's all you have to do.
It is like crispy little edge is more like a glass then.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
You can definitely see how, how thin it is at the edge, but you
could break it up, but in the center it's completely flexible.
And you can trim the edges and use them for one thing and then use the center as
like your fruit roll-ups or something.
Very fun and all right.
It's okay.
No, no trademark infringement intended.
If people don't have a dehydrator at home, is there another
way for them to dry these?
Yeah.
If you have, as long as you have a non-stick mat, something like a soap
pad, you can spread it on there and you can place it into a dry oven.
Sometimes I like to turn the oven on around like the warming stage, they
usually have like a warming setting.
I turn it on that.
Once it comes up to that temperature and it's preheated, I shut it off
and I put it in my fruit leather, you know, that'll keep it dry for,
or warm and dry, for quite a while.
You're just going to have check on it.
Check on it, 'cause if it's too hot for too long, it will just turn
the entire thing into fruit glass.
And usually if it's thicker and it's fruit glass, it's going to stick to your teeth.
Okay.
These won't stick to your teeth.
'Cause they have enough hydration that you can just chew on them.
They're fine.
But when it's too thick and it's really crispy and dry, they kind
of turned into like hard candy.
Okay.
So if someone is working in their oven and they don't have the precision
control of the dehydrator, are there any food safety concerns about leaving
something in the oven for that long?
It shouldn't be that big of a deal because it's really dry.
And you're pulling out that moisture.
When you're removing that moisture, you're lowering the risk for people.
Okay.
But obviously you don't want to leave it in there for like a week.
So obviously check on it and be safe.
Do you want to roll one of these?
Oh yeah.
One of the larger ones.
One of the larger ones, sure.
So what I did with this, I just put a little bit of water on the end to kind of
stick them together, but you can see it opens right up and you can make fun snacks
for your kids' lunchboxes or whatnot.
Whatever flavor's their favorite, you can make them rather than
just artificial color flavors.
Yes.
I want to do like watermelon.
It'd be great.
Super high hydration.
So it might take a little bit longer, but great.
Yeah.
If you do want to give this recipe a shot, Ultra-Stik is available on
our store, or you can enter to win in this week's giveaway by leaving in
the comments below a flavor of fruit leather that you would want to make.
Savory or sweet.
Oh, interesting.
Avocado flavored.
Yeah, so you can win a 400-gram bag of Ultra-Stik just by
leaving your comments below.
And we'd love to see what people are coming up with.
It's a lot of great ideas.
It's super fun.
And who knows, sometimes we decide we're gonna make it here in the kitchen.
So you can also get this recipe in the links in the description below as
well, but you know, make it your own.
So until next week, from here in the Modernist Pantry
test kitchen, I'm Janie Wang.
And I'm Scott Guerin.