Slightly tart but still with that berry sweetness, strawberry chips are gonna blow your mind. A perfect lil snack while in #quarantine, these are a great alternative to a bag of potato chips!
While my dad was making his daily haul of fruit salad—yes, he’s been doing that regularly since quarantine began—we noticed that our leftover strawberries probably weren’t gonna keep for much longer. Cue, a bright idea had by me.
A childhood lover of Special K cereal, I always used to search for all the dried strawberry morsels in the box. Sour on the tongue initially but just the faintest bit sugary, can you blame a kid for picking out the candy-esque cereal pieces?!
Stumbling onto that flashback, I decided that we should slice up the leftover berries and dehydrate them! Because we haven’t hopped on the dehydrator bandwagon, I had to use the oven, but trust me, the results are identical.
I should also note that we happen to have a handy strawberry slicing tool that is just amazing! Some might say it’s a useless tool, but I think this compact, berry-shaped slicer is a godsend. I use it all the time to cut both strawberries and mushrooms when I want perfectly thin and uniform slices! Plus, this saves a fair amount of time and heartache.
Into the oven, low and slow, these strawberry chips took about 3 hours to become completely dried. Though it’ll take a fair bit of patience waiting for these sweet bites, it’s super well worth it! Healthy, tasty, and simple to do, why not try your hand at dehydrating strawberries?
After snacking on a few as is, I quickly realized all the other fun ways that these berries can be used. Naturally, you can use them to top other sweet treats like ice cream or berry bark. Or, you can repurpose them again and toss them into a smoothie, trail mix or inside a cake batter. You can even pulverize them and use them as a coating for cake pops before dunking them into ganache!
I’ll tell you that I was quite impressed at how these chips turned out. Not only were they tasty, but also stunningly beautiful! They looked like dried flower petals when I pulled them out of the oven! Just gorgeous!
If you know anything about me, it’s that I very much enjoy trying new things in the kitchen. I like to play around with recipes and try and try creating new things regularly. Though it doesn't always work in my favour, when the fruits of my labour prove to be successful, that’s truly exciting.
Since quarantine, I feel like I’ve been doing a lot more of these #kitchenshenanigans and I'm kinda loving it! I never thought I’d make bread but here I am, finally having mastered the dutch oven loaf and tossing in new mixing every other day! I’m venturing into all kinds of different DIY food staples like extracts and maybe even limoncello—stay tuned for that post!
It’s just a fabulous time to experiment with new techniques and ingredients. So I invite you to kick off the creativity with this strawberry chip recipe! It might just wake up some culinary experimentation inside you!
. . .
Strawberry Chips
* Makes 1/2 cup of chips *
INGREDIENTS
1/2 container of strawberries
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F.
Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
Slice strawberries into uniform slices, approximately 1/8 inch thick.
Arrange strawberries on the baking sheet in a single layer with space in between them.
Bake for 2 hours until the strawberries start to look dry.
Flip over the berry morsels and continue to bake for an additional hour to fully dehydrate.
Remove the dried strawberries from the oven and allow to cool completely.
Serve immediately or store in an airtight container at room temperature.
. . .
Have you ever dehydrated fruit? What did you use and how did it turn out?