Our son Kevin has come a long way in the last 16 months.  He was just over 120 pounds as a tall 15 year old last summer, even though we cook and serve great meals almost every night.  With all the talk in our house about obesity and diabetes (both run in Russ' family), he looked around, and restricted his calories as a result.

Fortunately this began to change as we worked with him to understand that food is fuel, and was completely resolved when he became an athlete as a rower for his High School's Crew Team.  He both enjoys it and burns a huge amount of calories, which has dramatically increased his appetite.  It is not unusual for him to walk in from crew and eat a small meal just before dinner, and then a full dinner.  He eats a huge breakfast, and packs his lunchbox full of lunch and a pre-crew snack.

On top of this, he's eating a lot of healthy snacks at home (trail mix, nuts, fruit, and healthy home baked cookies).  We rely on the Meal Planner to keep all this food on hand and ready.  Having two teen age boys in the house means that we go through a lot of groceries, and planning in advance keeps us on budget and fully prepared.

There was a discussion about making caramel corn, and how fraught with peril the process can be.  If I ever write a cookbook, ‘Fraught with Peril’ should be the title.   I had all of the ingredients and was duly warned about deflating, burning, and the horror of clean up. 

Let’s tackle deflating, first.  That was the easiest.  You have to use plain old popping corn – not microwave popcorn.  It’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s additive free.  My bottle said to pop 1/2 cup of corn in 3 tbs of oil.  I didn’t need that much, so I popped 1/4 cup in 1 tbs of oil in my 4 1/2 quart pot.  Why less oil?  Because I wasn’t hoping to have enormous quantities of seasoned salt stick to the oil, I wanted caramel to adhere to the corn.  It was about 4 cups more popped corn than I needed, so the birds got a treat. 

Next, the caramel.  Yes, it can go from beautiful to burned in the blink of an eye if you aren’t careful.  Do you have a newer stove with a “power burner” or one that puts out more BTUs than the others?  This is NOT the burner to use – move your pot to a slower burner.  Now, I’m assuming that you already have out your butter, sugar, corn syrup and salt – don’t forget the patience, feel free to use extra. 

Why, yes, that is the same pot I used to pop the corn.  I just wiped it out and kept on going.

Steady and slow wins the race here.  There’s no pressure at all while you’re standing there stirring it, but when you have to leave it alone for 5 minutes?  Scary.  Don’t leave – don’t blink.  See where my heat is set?   I cooked the caramel at this temperature for the whole time.  The heat builds – don’t be tempted to help it along.

Now it’s time to put in the baking soda.  Do NOT put in cornstarch like I did.  Both containers are yellow – I don’t know what happened in my head.  My caramel was a little thicker than I hoped.  So, I said a little prayer that it would loosen in the oven and allow me to cover a bit more of the corn.

It came out fine.  More than fine.  Crispy, buttery, caramely…take it away from me!

And about that clean up?  Sugar dissolves in water – no big deal, it just takes more of that patience.  If it’s on the edge, just drape a wet cloth over the edge, letting one end hang in water in the pot to keep the wicking action going.  You could also spend the afternoon chipping it off and eating it…

This is gluten free, but not casein free.  I’m not sure if a butter replacement would work as well (anyone?). 

If you need a sweet treat on  your menu, add caramel corn to your meal plan!

In my humble, yet naive opinion, fruit leather should contain fruit, not corn syrup, added sugar, cottonseed oil, food dye…who needs all that?  The organic fruit leather is better, but expensive.  Can this be done at home?

Since I have blueberries…a lot of blueberries..I decided to make fruit leather.  

Step 1 – Review recipes for the basics.

Step 2 – Wing it!

I wanted to make enough fruit leather to make it worth the time, but not so much that if it was a disaster we’d be stuck with it.  I settled on 3 cups of blueberries (frozen), 2 cups of applesauce (a 24 oz jar of Trader Joe’s Gravenstein - minus what my son ate before I could grab it - because that’s what I had on hand) and about 2 tablespoons of maple syrup.  Some people use honey, I think it depends on what fruit you’re using, and what you have.  It makes sense instead of sugar, which could crystallize and cause problems.

I cooked the blueberries with the syrup until a lot of the water was gone, about 20 minutes.  The wooden spoon left a visible trail in the pot, but it filled in quickly.  I let it cool for a few hours (ok, I let it sit until bed time).  Many of the recipes puree the hot fruit right away.  I was NOT in the mood to clean blueberry off the ceiling.  Plus, cooling = more evaporation = a better chance that it will actually dehydrate.  So, once the blueberry mixture was cool, I added the applesauce and blended it with my stick blender (go ahead, read about cornflake rain!).  It only took a minute or two before the mixture was smooth.

I sprayed 2 jellyroll pans with vegetable spray, divided the mixture between them, set the oven at its lowest temperature (170), propped open the door with a wooden spoon, and went to bed. 

The next morning (7 hours later), I had fruit leather!  But, it wasn’t perfect, and I know why…

My pans are black and slightly warped through years of use.   The fruit puree was too thick to be self leveling.  I filled the first pan and leveled it using a large offset spatula, but the 2nd pan did not get as much and had thin spots which were not immediately apparent.  When they came out of the oven, the less filled pan had spots that were not leathery.  This is bad for rolling, but an interesting crispy snack.  I set the crispy pieces on the counter and they were enjoyed by many and preferred by some.  Go figure.

I need about 1 more cup of puree, and to line the pans with parchment to get a better view of the uniformity.  As an added bonus when the leather is done it can be cut it right along with the parchment instead of having to cut individual strips for rolling. 

Because this isn’t an “official” recipe yet, you can’t add it to your meal plan.  If you make it I’d love to hear what worked for you and what didn’t.

So…can this be done at home?  Yes.  Is it economical?   When you compare it to an all real ingredient version, yes, even when you factor in the ~$0.77 it costs to run the oven overnight.

It’s also a nice treat to send along when you want to send something tasty, for birthday treats, but have to worry about food allergies.