It is strawberry season! This is my favorite fruit, so I am always excited with spring and the beginning of summer for the best strawberries.

I apparently was over-zealous on our last grocery trip because I got more than I could eat quick enough. Normally I just freeze strawberries when they get past a couple days of fresh eating but are still good. I am a little bit of a strawberry snob, and if they get a little bit mushy into a freezer bag they go. I use them for smoothies, but I saw this recipe on Pinterest and though I would give it a whirl to add some goodness to my morning cereals.

Oven-Dried Strawberries

Ingredients

• Strawberries
• Lemon Juice (ratio of 1/4 tsp per pound of strawberries)

First wash your strawberries. Then cut the caps off and cut into 2 to 3 slices depending on the size of the strawberries. You don’t want the slices too small because they will shrink up enough that you may not be able to get them off the pan.

Put them in a bowl and put lemon juice over them. This a guess helps with the drying process. I also probably put a little more than the recipe called for, and it didn’t affect the taste that I could tell.

I used parchment paper to alleviate having a sticky cookie sheet at the end, at the recommendation of the Pinterest find.

Lay the strawberry strips on the cookie sheet.

You will bake them for 4 hours at 200 degrees. I checked them at every hour.

Hour One.

Hour Two.

I flipped them at hour three.

This was the final product. Some of them will still be a little sticky, chewy, and spongy. I found that the ones in the middle didn’t dry out as much those on the edges.

They taste great! And they are perfect on top of my cheerios!

It is a lot of work, so I do not think I will do it very often. I think I may try them in our dehydrator to see if it is a little easier since I won’t have to flip at all. It is a nice change of pace though with my left over strawberries, and I don’t feel like I am wasting them.