Dried fruit: a healthy snack or a pie ingredient?

How about both? Now….a cookie or a candybar? How about neither and some dried fruit instead? The last option is definitely for those with a sweet tooth or a temporary craving who want to steer clear of saturated fat or so very common: corn syrup. An easy access to both fresh and dried fruit means it should be present at every home.

Now, you do not have to dry the fruit yourself even if you are a DYI kind of a person. Let’s be honest: drying fruit does require certain conditions to be met and even though the process itself would fill your house with lovely aroma, it is time consuming and quite cumbersome. Sometimes it is really better to leave it up to the experts. And we do pride ourselves to be experts. So why not try our dried berries? We have all kinds!

Fruit drying is not Mission Impossible

Do we air dry our fruit out in the open? Nope. And let us share our secrets with you. The reason why we do not practice traditional methods of fruit drying is because it is: A- incredibly time consuming and B- the amounts of fruit we produce would simply not dry out evenly. More importantly: traditional methods of fruit drying do cause significant loss of nutritional value of said fruit. And there is another reason why such process would be problematic: all the insects and flies outside! I bet you forgot about those. The use of modern- day technology really does a better job than nature in this case. Fun fact: thanks to technology, we can dry the fruit in low temperatures which is called subliminal drying.

Tiny fruit like all kinds of berries (and as you may know by now- berries are our specialty, we are all about berries, we love berries, we grow berries and berries no longer hold any secrets from us!). Berries do need some extra special care when drying. It takes real expertise to preserve berries well. Which is why there are so many other types of preserved berries out there- for instance candied berries. And that is a whole different story because it is nothing more than frying fruit in a sugary syrup- which is far from healthy and a far cry from what we are all about.

So is all that effort and hustle with fruit drying worthwhile?- you may ask. Absolutely! Dried fruit loses only a tiny fraction of its nutritional value or its aroma- the rest- all the goodness is all in there, year- round! Dried fruit is perfect for baking, creating healthy home- made desserts or smoothies, or simply as a snack in- between meals. Dried fruit delivers a punch! Fruit will always be more vitamin- dense than any pharmaceutical supplement out there and the body absorbs what comes from nature better and easier. So get your blender and smoothie glasses out! Salut and bon appétit!