Fruit Leather Snacks

When I was little I used to love going to the health food store with my mum on Saturday mornings. They used to sell these little fruit leather snacks and we used to go with the intention of stocking up for the week's lunch boxes. They rarely made it to when we got home, let alone through the week for our packed lunches. I decided to experiment the other day as I had a load of apples left (they were on offer and I couldn't resist buying 3 kilos of them!) so made up a big batch of apple compote. I put the oven on as low as it could go, spread it over a square silicone cake mould and hoped for the best. This was the result! 

Ingredients

4 apples

1 tsp cinnamon 

100ml water

Method

1. Peel, core and chop the apples into small chunks (around 1cm).

2. Put into a saucepan over a low heat with the cinnamon and water and simmer gently until the apples are soft and starting to go mushy.

3. Using a hand blender, mush the apples until they're blended and resemble a smooth sauce.

4. Cool the sauce and spread over a silicone baking sheet. You need something square or rectangular thats shallow to be able to spread it thinly. You want to get it as smooth as possible and only about 1 or 2 mm thick. Thin and smooth is all that matters.

5. Bake for about 6 hours on the lowest setting on your oven. If you leave it in too long you'll end up with an apple crisp rather than soft leather strips. 

6. Leave to cool then cut into strips with scissors. 

Tips

- Try using other fruit in with the apple such as strawberries or pears.

- Roll them up into little rolls to make them fun for kids to eat. 

- Use a cookie cutter to cut them into shapes for kids. 

- Try making some applesauce with no cinnamon. Take out a small amount of the cooled sauce and add the cinnamon to that. Pipe it in diagonal lines across the spread out apple sauce on the tray to give a stripy effect. Bake as normal and you'll have stripy fruit leather! You could also make a cinnamon free apple sauce and pipe the lines in a strawberry compote to make it multicoloured and stripy. Play around with it! It's so simple and is inevitably delicious so even if it doesn't look like it'd win any beauty pageants, it'll sure taste delicious! 

Enjoy! 

Healthy Banana and Oat Cookies

I love cookies. Who doesn't? I'm trying to cut down on processed foods though, as I'm getting more and more conscious about what I eat. These cookies are super simple. I've played around with different variations on the recipe too. The first ones I made were these cranberry ones. Simply oats, banana and cranberries. Easy huh? I was going to add some orange zest but didn't have any oranges and a walk to the shop in the rain didn't sound too appealing. The second ones I made are chocolate ones. Healthy chocolate cookies! I use raw cacao in my baking instead of cocoa powder. It gives a really rich chocolatey flavour and you don't need to use much at all. It's a bit pricey but I buy in bulk and using it means I can eat more chocolatey bakes without the guilt. It's high in antioxidants and is good for your heart and stuff (I googled it once and was sold but if you want a proper list of why it's good, go ahead and have a look online). 

Ingredients

2 bananas

200g oats

25g cranberries

Zest of 1 orange

Method

1. Peel the bananas and mash them in a bowl.

2. Stir in the oats, cranberries and zest.

3. Roll into 20 small balls and flatten onto baking trays into cookies

4. Bake at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes until they're golden and firm to the touch.

5. Cool on a wire rack and eat!

                                      

Variations

Chocolate and Date Cookies

- Add 25g raw cacao and 25g chopped dates to the mixture.

Chocolate Orange Cookies

- Add 25g raw cacao and the zest of an orange to the mixture.

White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

- Add 25g white chocolate chips and 25g cranberries to the mixture.

Tips

You can basically add anything you want to these cookies. With my recipes they work out at around 50-55 calories each. Obviously adding chunks of chocolate will increase that but they're still better for you than normal cookies and are low in saturated fat and sugar. I don't feel guilty polishing half a batch of these in one go! They're fab for breakfast on the go or snacks during the day. I even took a load to the cinema with me to avoid the temptation of popcorn and pick and mix!