These passionfruit banana fruit roll-ups are a hit with our family this holiday season. This simple recipe is gluten-free, dairy-free, can even be prepared RAW.
This Christmas 2017 we finally busted out our Teflex sheets. Last year we sent dehydrated bananas to our mainland families for Christmas. This year we needed a new trick. But since we had spent almost half of the year away from our farm, we had very little fruit and other foods to choose from…luckily the passionfruit vines Adam had planted years ago are now providing us with an abundance this winter. And, even though our banana forests were not maintained we still managed to find 3 racks of bananas. So – the lilikoi banana marriage finally happened with the help of our Teflex sheets we ordered for our mediocre dehydrater.
This super simple recipe was actually inspired by our friend in California who loves lilikoi. This kind family hosted us on and off for months. And – told us a story of how their friend tried to send them a box of fresh lilikoi, but it was opened inspected and not allowed through customs. In an effort to send our friends and family a little bit of the tropical vibe – we created these fruit leathers.
Recipe for Passionfruit Banana Fruit Roll-ups
Equipment needed:
- dehydrator
- teflex sheet
- blender
Ingredients:
- lots of ripe bananas
- lots of ripe lilikoi (passionfruit)
- honey
- coconut oil (for teflex sheets)
Packaging:
- unbleached parchment paper
- You need omething to tie your fruit leather roll (better if it is food grade – or safe to put in our near your mouth)
Steps for making your own fruit leather
- Prepare your dehydrator. If it has been a while since you have used your dehyradtor – take it out and give it a good wash. Here in the tropics, everything gets moldy real quick a
- After cleaning it, let it dry thoroughly and consider drying it with paper towels or a really clean towel. Our dehydrator is a mid-budget model. It is good because it has temperature control. Still it is on the smaller side and in my opinion a pain to clean. But all dehydrators are probably a pain to clean. I just looked it up and you can get it for $99 on Amazon:L’EQUIP 528 6 Tray Food Dehydrator, 500-watt
- Prepare your teflex sheets. The Teflex sheets Adam ordered were square. Not meant for the inside of our dehydrator. So I used a clean “exacto knife” – to be more exact I used the same kind of blade Adam uses for grafting – a hobby knife with a clean sharp blade. I roughly cut a circle in the middle and cut the edges to fit. After cutting the teflex sheets to the right size – I lathered them in refined organic coconut oil.
3. Blend up your ingredients. We have a Blendtec blender. I highly recommend it, or one of a similar quality. Especially when dealing with hard small seeds, like passionfruit seeds. This blender chops rights through them effortlessly. Furthermore we use the “wild side” jar for it. It is large enough to blend more than 4 cups (more like 6) without overflowing and making a mess. Here I put about 8 or so ripe bananas. 3-4 fresh lilikoi and 1 heaping tablespoon honey. I blend on high for 50 seconds until creamy.
4. Evenly pour your mixture onto your teflex sheets. I use about 2 blenders worth of the mixture per batch in my dehydrator – which has 6 levels. When pouring the mixture or batter in the idea is to make a even coat, where you cannot see through it. Try to pour evenly so that the “batter” doesn’t rub up against the middle or the sides too much making it a pain to clean. You can try using an oiled rubber spatula.
I used an angled icing spatula and found this was much easier than a rubber spatula. Although , it is still hard to get it completely even. Try but don’t drive yourself nuts. Shoot for ⅛” thick. Do not go more than ¼”. Wilton Angled Icing Spatula
5. Start the dehydrator. For raw fruit leathers the raw foodies will tell you that you should not heat items above 105 degrees F. This is fine, but it will take a long time to dehydrate your passionfruit leathers. Especially because passionfruit pulp adds a lot of water to the equation. Consider your audience for the fruit roll-ups. For me, this Christmas 2017 the audience was our family – definitely not raw foodies. So I set the dehydrator around 115 F t 125F. I did several batches. If I was starting it later in the evening, I would set the temperature a little lower overnight. Then when I woke up would check them and flip them and adjust the temp for the day.
At 115 – 125 degree F, with about ⅛” thickness, most fruit leathers should be done at around 18 hours in the TROPICS. It is important to flip them over about halfway through. You should be able to peel the leather off the Teflex without compromising or ripping it and turn it over. If it starts to rip it is not ready to be turned over yet. The fruit roll-ups are done when they are no longer soft, or tacky.
6. Roll-em up. Use a large cutting board to cut the leathers in your desired length shape. At first I made small ones, like the horrible ones we all ate as children. But I found this to be labor intensive – so I began to make them as big as possible. Use the razor/exacto knife here again to help cut the leathers and the parchment paper.
Roll up as tight as possible, secure with your preferred method. At first I used scotch tape. But Adam gave me grief because it was hard to take off and he felt like he could taste/smell the sticky stuff on the tape. For lack of better options in our rural, humble town we used clean floss, like tooth floss for the remainder of our gifts. I am sure there is a better option out there. Please comment if you have any suggestions on that or anything else.
From Hawaii to you – MELE KALIKIMAKA!
Thank you so much for your fruit leather idea. I used to make lilikoi leather for my family; harvested lilikoi from the fruit with seeds strained, dusted with powdered sugar for ease of wraping in parchment because it was still sticky. But your recipe looks so good I’m going to try it this year. I’ve also made it mixed with plain applesauce as a thickener. I have trouble thickening the puree with guargum because it gets lumpy. That’s not good. Thank you again. Sandi