As the beets mature in the garden, and the hubby deposits a dozen or so on my kitchen counter,  I quickly research tasty recipes for these small orbs of my favorite color. I found the answer in my dehydrator cookbook: Mary Bell’s Complete Dehydrator Cookbook. I come across a beet leather recipe, but I was a bit hesitant wondering if I would find somewhere in my daily menu to fit an item eaten mostly by children. The demand of using up these beets quickly didn’t allow for a lot of time to deliberate, so I got to work and tried it. After a bit of tweaking(using sweetened applesauce instead of unsweetened); this makes my fifth or sixth leather. It’s a great recipe to use up roasted beets I haven’t eaten during the week, and I have actually found, it’s perfect when you need a healthy pick me up. I stash it in my desk drawer, and it’s there when my stomach starts to growl before I am ready to break-out lunch

First, I roast the beets as addressed in an earlier blog but do not add the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper:
http://veggiesandcheeseandeggs.blogspot.com/2014/08/roasting-beets-cannot-be-beat.html

Two cups sliced, roasted(or boiled) beets and two cups sweetened apple sauce.

Spread on a dehydrator, fruit roll-up sheet(you will find these on Amazon for around $9.00) evenly. Throw in the dehydrator for 12 or more hours at 135 degrees. Remove when dried completely

Voila’ you have just made your own fruit roll/leather. Be impressed…this is pretty darn cool. Notice the missing leather in the bottom, right-hand corner; hard to resist.

Best if kept in refrigerator but will last 3-5 days outside of.