Valentine fruit leather fortune cookies

My little Luca loves fruit leathers. He has a real passion for strawberry & mango ones. I asked him why he likes them so much and after the first embarrassed “I do not know” (he’s a boy, he doesn’t like to be asked “why” too many times…) he said “I like that I can unroll them and they are sticky”. ok, maybe that’s not the answer I was dreaming about but it’s fine. They are a super healthy snack and he loves them: that’s enough for me 😉

As S.Valentine is coming I decided to play just a bit with shapes and I used the homemade fruit leather foil to create tiny fortune cookies with a personalized message. As my little Luca just learned to recognize his name I decided to write just his name on the message with tons of hearts…and he loved it!!

I decided to go for a nice mix of fresh berries directly from the farmers market. Thanks to the Southern Californian sun local berries are already very sweet!

This is all you will need to create 20 mini valentine fruit leather fortune cookies:

And that’s how to proceed (EASY!):

– place the fresh fruit chopped in big pieces in a food processor. Add the lemon juice and the agave syrup. You can use honey instead of agave syrup, just remember not to give honey to toddlers under 12 months. Mix everything in order to obtain a smooth puree’.

– Optional. If your kids do not like berries’ seeds you can place the fruit mix in a strainer and remove the seeds.

– pour the berry mix on a parchment paper foil placed on a baking sheet. You can always use a silicon baking mat, it will work too. With the suggested quantities I made two batches of fruit leathers.

– Bake the fruit leather foil in the preheated oven at 170F/80C for 4/5 hours. We are basically dehydrating the fruit. Every oven is different and, most of all, every fruit has a different quantity of water inside. The trick is to start checking the fruit leathers after 3 hours. Gently tap your finger on the surface of the fruit leather: if the fruit puree will not stick to your finger, the leather is ready!

– While you are waiting you can prepare the love messages: cut tiny stripes of parchment paper. Take the round shape cookie cutter that you will use to cut the fruit leathers to decide how big and long the messages should be. With a colored (red/pink) pencil write a love message. I suggest to start and end the message with an heart that will finally stick out from the fortune cookie.

– Remove the fruit leather from the baking sheet and place it on a flat surface (I used a wooden cutting board). Using a round shape cookie cutter cut the fruit leather foil in small circles.

– Take one parchment paper message strip and place is in the lower part of the circle. Let the final part of the message stay out. Fold the circle in half and with your fingers shape the fruit leather as a fortune cookie.

Done!

They are very cute and my family really loved the personalized message idea!!

ciao!

b