Jello Apples

I had a box of apples going soft on me, so I thought I'd better do something with them. I've dehydrated apples plain and dipped in apple juice/cinnamon mixture, but had never tried the jello method, and since I live in Jello capital of the world (Utah) I thought I might as well give it a try.

Here's me and my little helper with apples in various stages. The box on the stove has the apples in it, the handy peeler/corer/slicer machine-a-ma-jig has an apple on it all ready to get sliced up. One bowl on the counter has 2 quarts of water + 2 TB Fruit Fresh in it plus sliced apples (this keeps the apples from going brown), and the other bowl has all the apple junk that went to the compost pile when we were done. And hey, who took that picture before I had my hair done anyway?

Here's how the process went:

Wash apples

Run them through the magic peeler/corer/slicer

Cut the resulting apple spiral in half so you have a bunch of half circles

Put the apple slices in the Fruit Fresh solution

When your Fruit Fresh bowl gets full of apples, take them to the dehydrator and put the apples on the trays

Sprinkle liberally with Jello powder of your choice (I used Raspberry) and load them in the dehydrator

When all the trays are full, dry as directed in your dehydrator's directions--it takes about 10 hours at 135 degrees in my dehydrator.

These are pretty tasty, and lovely colored, but also an extra level of messiness to make than plain ol' dried apples. Sprinkle the Jello on the apples over the sink so you can wash down the extra jello powder. It also leaves lots of sticky sticky sticky on your dehydrator trays, but it washes off pretty well--it's only Jello. Dried apples will last a long time in your storage if they are in airtight containers (ziplocks are NOT airtight). They will last about a week tops if left on the counter where little people can find them and eat them!