Quick and Healthy Fruit Chips - Simple Saturday

No matter how healthy I try to be, when I hear a bag of chips being opened my head spins around. Old habits die hard and....well...gosh, salty sweet chips taste good. So, here's what we can do:

Quick and Healthy Fruit Chips

I have found that it's a lot easier to convince myself, children and friends to eat better IF I have something positive to offer, instead of a list of what we CAN'T eat. These chips take almost no effort, in fact I purposely show them (in the picture below) without a mandoline or anything fancier than a regular potato peeler. The biggest secret to great tasting fruit chips is having amazing product (read that as: farmer's market produce, fresh out of the ground/off the tree/picked from the bush deliciousness.)
Even in the heat of summer, you can easily slide a tray of these goodies into the oven because it doesn't need to get any higher than 200-220F.

It's as easy as:
Slice good, firm fruit into the thinnest slices possible (mandoline is great, but a potato peeler works too, or just carefully with a sharp knife).
Some fruit (ie, apples and bananas) do well with a little sprinkle of lemon juice to keep their color, but it's not required.

Place on a Silpat topped baking sheet (makes for easiest fruit chip removal).
Place for one hour in a preheated 200F oven
Remove and let fruit cool. If slices are sticky, try for a few more minutes, but don't let over-brown. (Bananas can take twice as long.)
When cooled, fruit chips will crisp up.

Optional extras to sprinkle - according to personal likes, allergies and age of chip-consumer:

sea salt
barbecue powder
Garam Masala

Wanna get fancier? Crumble the dried chips into a powder to sprinkle over seared scallops, ice cream, or fold into macaron batter.

Now, don't you feel chipper?