Kamloops woman discovers heat wave hack for fruit leather

Kamloops resident Ida Beni has been driving to work in a car that smells like an apricot this week, but she doesn’t mind.

Over a hot, sunny weekend, Beni used her car as an oven to make fruit leather, a trick she called the best hassle-free hack she has ever found.

“My co-worker told me about it, I never thought it would work,” she said. “I was doubtful but it worked perfectly.”

Beni makes fruit leather every year out of whatever fruit are growing locally, starting with cherries and adding in apricots, plums and peaches as they ripen.

She blends them into a mixture at roughly five litres at a time and puts it on the stove for an hour. She stirs the mixture to release moisture and when it thickens, spreads them in trays she puts on her deck to slowly solidify in the sun. That’s when the trouble starts.

“The processing of the food is one thing, but covering everything to keep the dust and bugs out is a whole other story,” she said. “I have to cover it with cheesecloth but the wind comes up and blows it off.”

On Sunday, Aug. 10, Beni took her coworker’s advice and put a couple of trays of the fruit mix on the dashboard of her car.

“I was checking it every few hours and then to my surprise one of the trays was totally ready,” she said.

The leather will only cure outside if the outside temperatures are over 30 Celsius.

“I tried before when it wasn’t hot enough and got a few moldy trays, which was a bummer,” Beni said. “Sometimes I keep them out for a few days and after two days if they aren’t ready, I throw them in the oven for a bit to make sure they don’t mold.”

The heat in the car cures them faster without the need for a cheesecloth cover.

“The car oven was the best thing,” Beni said. “I still have more mixture in the fridge to put in the car. My kids love the leather and in the winter it’s a really good snack.”