When the berries or tree fruits are ripening faster than we can eat them, I haul out my food dehydrator. Thanks to this old dryer, I can easily turn the excess harvest into fruit leather.

Knowing that fruit leather is packed with nutrients, I’ve always felt good about giving these dried rolls to kids for school lunches or picnics. Since this homemade snack makes no mess and requires no refrigeration, I used to keep my children occupied on trips by tearing off pieces of leather for them to munch on as we drove.

Of course, you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy fruit leather. My husband and I find it a great snack for traveling.

Any kind of fruit will do, and mixtures of fruits are also good. Many fruits, like the pears and fall-bearing raspberries ripening now, need no sweetening. If any fruit tastes a bit sour, I simply add a little honey to the puree.

You can make fruit leather in an oven one tray at a time, with the temperature turned to its lowest setting. A food dehydrator that holds multiple trays, though, is more efficient and is a long-lasting investment.

My own food dehydrator is four decades old. One dial fell off and got lost years ago, so now I just guess at the settings. But my dehydrator has 10 big trays and still dries foods as well as when it was new.

The fruit doesn’t stick to the trays, which are lined with Teflon-coated sheets that are as old as my dehydrator.

To make fruit leather, wash the fruit and remove any cores, stems, or bad spots. Drop the fruit a little at a time into the blender and puree until smooth. Pour enough puree onto each tray to smooth out into a layer about a fourth of an inch thick. Repeat until all the trays are filled.

After the dehydrator has been running a few hours, you can see the fruit beginning to dry around the edges. At this point, I usually flip over each piece of leather, so the underneath side will also dry thoroughly.

When completely dry, fruit leather peels off easily. You can cut it to any size you want, then lay it on wax paper and roll up each piece like a scroll.

The next step is one of the most important: Conditioning. Put the dried scrolls in a paper sack for about a week to even out any remaining moisture. Then store the fruit leather in glass jars with screw tops. It will keep indefinitely.

If you have a lot of fruit already in your freezer, you can make fruit leather out of that, too. But frozen fruit spoils faster once it’s thawed, so I recommend bringing it to a boil before pureeing.

• Write to Jan Riggenbach at 2319 S. 105th Ave., Omaha, NE 68124. Please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Find more online at www.midwestgardening.com.