I’ve been having way too much fun with this dehydrator. The latest adventure: banana bread fruit roll-ups. Over the last couple of months I’ve been changing my eating habits and cutting out a LOT of the wheat products. Not entirely, of course, because seriously if I ever give up homemade bread and pastries someone shoot me. I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in how I feel on a day-to-day basis now that I’m eating a lot better. Basically what I’ve figured out is that by giving up sandwiches for salads, pasta for spaghetti squash, etc I can enjoy the breads and sweets a lot more when I do decide to eat them. I don’t take them for granted, I guess you could say.
With new eating habits come new recipe ideas. When one has ripe bananas on the kitchen counter the normal thing to do is make banana nut bread. Or, at least, that’s what I do with them. A few weeks ago I found Katie’s Peanut Butter Banana Leather and I knew I wanted to try a variation of it. What I ended up settling on was a 4-ingredient banana roll-up that reminds me so much of banana nut bread that it’s now my favorite snack.
Banana Bread Roll-Ups
Ingredients:
2 ripe bananas
1/4 cup almond butter
1/4 tsp apple pie spice*
1/4 tsp rum extract
Directions:
Slice bananas and mash until as smooth as possible (or puree if you are fortunate enough to have a small food processor/immersion blender that isn’t a huge pain to dig out/use/clean up after). Mix in the 1/4-cup almond butter until well combined and mixture is smooth. Finally, blend in spice and extract.
Pour mixture onto leather trays in your dehydrator and try to get as even as possible. (I divided my batter between two trays for faster dry time/thinner roll-ups) Dehydrate at 135 degrees for several hours until your mix looks dark and shiny. You can do these in the oven on the lowest temp setting, just pour your batter on a bit of parchment or a Silpat mat and watch it closely because it should dry out faster.
* On the apple pie spice… A couple years ago I made up a big batch from a recipe I had found online, but of course I didn’t write it down anywhere. I think it was a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and maybe some clove? There are a lot of recipes in internet land if you look for them.
You could try slicing the bananas to dehydrate. The chips are quite tasty. They are easy to pack as snacks and are sweet enough to take the place of a piece of candy. We’ve had a dehydrator for years but don’t use it as much as you are. Try tomatoes from your garden this year.
You could try sliced bananas. They come out tasting sweet. You can pack them for a snack as a candy substitute. Sliced tomatoes from your garden would be great in winter soups.