Easy Pumpkin leather

This easy pumpkin leather recipe takes you step by step on how to make a delicious snack that is both simple and nourishing for the body!

I am always finding new ways to preserve food, and this past summer, I focused a lot of my time on dehydrating more of my produce. I love dehydrating because you can fit a lot of produce in just one jar.

It’s an easy way to store food for the winter and there are all kinds of fun recipes to try with the dehydrator. If you are new to dehydrating, don’t be intimidated! It is as easy as slicing up some vegetables and putting them straight in the dehydrator for several hours. Check out all the reasons I love my dehydrator below.

The dehydrator can also be used for yummy snacks, like pumpkin leather. If you like pumpkin pie, then you will love this recipe. It is adapted from the book So Easy to Preserve. I have mentioned this book before, but if your interested in learning to be less reliant on grocery stores and more reliant on what grows in your backyard, this book is a must have. It takes you step by step on everything from canning to dehydrating.

Ingredients for Pumpkin Leather

• pumpkin puree (see my post here on how to make pumpkin puree at home)
• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• cloves
• honey

How to make pumpkin leather

Start by pouring 2 cups of pumpkin puree into a bowl. Yes, you could use canned pumpkin, but check out this post as to why I don’t buy canned pumpkin from the store AND how to make your own.

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Okay we have our pumpkin puree. Add 1/3 a cup of honey and stir to combine. Next add your spices, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, and 1/8 tsp powdered cloves.

Stir it all up and give it a good sniff, smells pretty good so far, huh?

Spread this mixture onto a dehydrator tray or cookie sheet. Do not spread it thin, you want a nice chunky layer, otherwise you will have pumpkin chips instead of pumpkin leather. Place the tray/cookie sheet in your dehydrator or oven and dehydrate at 140 degrees Fahrenheit for around 8 hours.

You will know it is ready when it feels, well, leathery. Peel the leather off of the tray and cut it into strips with a pair of scissors and roll each strip. Store in a glass jar or eat immediately 🙂

My kids love these! They have the flavor of pumpkin pie and are a great on the go snack. This recipe is also easy enough that my kids can make it by themselves, which is another win.

~Amanda

P.S. There are some recipes where the oven will do, but I have found that buying a dehydrator is way more efficient and here is why…

Why I bought a dehydrator

• Using an oven to dehydrate in the summer will heat up the kitchen very quickly. I try to use my oven as little as possible during the summer months. However, a dehydrator doesn’t throw out all the heat that an oven does and the dehydrator can also be put in another room of the house. I have mine in our laundry room.
• A dehydrator uses less electricity than an oven. I mean your heating up a small appliance versus a big oven.
• A dehydrator has multiple levels for food, allowing you to dehydrate more food than what the rack in your oven will hold.
• It doesn’t take up the oven. I cook a lot and I use my oven a lot, so it wasn’t practical for me to use my oven to dehydrate food for long periods of time. Buying a dehydrator freed my oven up to be used for meals. Now I can multi-task by cooking meals and preserving our food at the same time.

If you are interested in buying a dehydrator I highly recommend the Excalibur. It is more expensive than other dehydrators, but well worth the investment. It will last you a long time and their design allows for the maximum amount of food to be dehydrated versus other brands that may only dehydrate half as much food. And one of my favorite reasons to buy the Excalibur is this…It’s MADE IN THE USA! I definitely want to support that! Check them out here.