Story of an Apple

So, for my birthday a few months ago, my husband bought me a dehydrator. I know, it was a very romantic birthday present, especially for the first birthday in our marriage. But he asked what I wanted a few months prior, and I said a dehydrator. I know I'm hard to shop for, and I know I'm especially picky about birthday presents. I knew I wanted one, and I knew it was the kind of thing he wouldn't let me spring for any day of the year. So, come my birthday, I unwrapped a... drum roll please, a dehydrator. Haha. I was ecstatic.

I've made several things in it since, and the first batch of anything never really turns out. It's a trial and error kind of thing. But I've made enough apples to get it down to a system now, so I thought I'd share my process, and pictures.

First of all, I also have a mandoline. We picked it up for really cheap on sale one day, and I didn't use it for awhile. But it makes dehydrating a lot of things a lot easier.

So here's what I started with. This time I'm making them with cinnamon. I don't always; they're fantastic all on their own.

So that's a pretty basic red delicious apple. I tried a few different kinds of apples, and I like red delicious. They don't seem to have as many seeds as some other kinds, and the few they do have pop out nicer. I also like the dark shade the peel turns in the end, as opposed to a yellow or green apple, which ends up looking a little sickly. So I just started with one single apple. I usually dehydrate four or more at a time, as many as my dehydrator will fit. But for the pictures, I'm only using one.

I ran the apple through my mandoline with the thin slicing blade, until I just had enough to hold. I used to slice as much as I possibly could, but I cut myself a few too many times. I find it nice to just much that top inch or so. Also, I use the thin blade, because I don't find much difference between thin and thick, once finished, but I get a lot more slices out of the the thin. So I just feel like I'm making more. Certain fruits, I slice on thick because they hold together better that way.

I pick them up, one slice at a time from the pile the mandoline makes, and check for stem or seed pieces. The mandoline will happily slice the seeds along with the apple, so I usually have several pieces, rather than a few seeds.

I arrange them on a plate, slightly overlapping so that I waste as little cinnamon as possible. If I'm not making cinnamon apples, I don't bother with a plate. I just pick them up one at a time and arrange them into the dehydrator.

I gently sprinkle cinnamon onto them, but only on one side. I don't see the point in sprinkling both sides. One is enough to make them taste great, and I'm kind of afraid the powder will make a mess of my dehydrator if it's facing down. Normally, I would have sliced just more than one apple to fill the plate perfectly, but I wanted to show you how much one apple makes.

Once arranged in my dehydrator, these apples fill one tray quite nicely. Other apples I've used are wider, and I can't fit more than one row of slices, except for the weird pieces in the middle. And a single apple will usually fill a tray and a half or two. But these are smaller, and I think I like that better.

You can see I have another tray underneath, and that one also has a single apple on it. I have five trays, so if I squish, I could make five and a half apples at a time, but I don't see the point. For now, I'm sticking with an even five.

My book says apples take 4-8 hours. When I slice them this thin, four is usually good, but it doesn't seem to hurt them to leave them in longer. So I put them in at lunch, and collect them after work, or whenever I have time that evening. They're good like that.

The finished product