Lavashak – Persian Fruit Leather

Lavashak, or Persian fruit leather, is a popular snack among Iranians. By cooking fruits, you get a thick puree, the puree is then dried in thin layers and cut into different shapes.
Lavashak can be sour or sweet and sour.

It is a delicious and lovely option for snacks. Adding a little bit of salt to the sourness, it becomes extremely mouth-watering.
Each fruit has its own benefits and vitamins. By making Lavashak, you can profit from all those! Lavashak helps with constipation too.

By making Lavashak at home, you no longer waste the extra fruits in the fridge. You can also benefit from those fruits for longer because Lavashak has a longer shelf life than fruits.

Making these delicious Persian fruit leathers is very easy. You only need some fruit and a bit of salt or sugar. As for drying, there are different methods. I’ve written whatever you need to know about them here!

what is Lavashak?

In Iran, fruit leathers are called lavashak. After cooking the fruit puree, they add some salt. Then spread it in thin layers in the tray. They usually put the tray on the roofs to dry.

Lavashak is from Iran, In this region, most of the popular lavashaks have a sour taste. They serve lavashak with Torshak, pomegranate paste, prune, and Gheisi(dried apricots) to multiply its sour taste.

Which fruits are proper for making Persian fruit leather?

Lavashaks exist in different colors and flavors. You can use various fruits to make them, but these fruits are the best for making fruit rolls:

• Pomegranate
• Kiwi
• Cherry
• Apple
• Peach
• Apricot
• Nectarine
• Plum
• Sour cherry
• Orange

You can even make a compound Lavashak which contains various fruits and is called multi-fruit Lavashak. The following combinations are some of the bests:

• Peach and apricot
• Apple and pomegranate
• Kiwi and apple
• Apple, peach, and nectarine
• Cherry, peach, apple, nectarine, and black plum
• 7-fruits-Lavashak that is made of seven fruits of your choice, like Peach, nectarine, apricot, apple, Cherry, dried sloe, black plum, etc.

Peach is a soft fruit and one of the best fruits for making Lavashak. Peach Lavashak is extremely pleasant and sweet and sour.

What does Lavashak taste like?

Most Lavashaks are either sour or sweet and sour. This taste mostly comes from the fruit itself. No particular additive is used, only some salt or sugar to balance the taste.
Sweet Lawashaks exist too but I don’t think they’re popular, because the original taste of Lavashak is sour.

The flavor depends on the fruit you choose. For example, if you have sour pomegranate, your Lavashak becomes sour. If you use sweet pomegranate, you get a sweet and sour Lavashak!

If your pomegranate is too sour, you can use some sugar to balance the taste; this depends on your preference, if the pomegranate is sweet, you can add some salt.

The most appealing fruit leathers are the sour ones with a hint of salt. Sourness is very pleasant when served with saltiness, even by thinking about it, I can feel the sourness of Lavashak in my mouth!

Why do we cook the fruits?

The cooking process makes the fruits lose their raw taste and enhances their pleasant taste, this is why Lavashak gets a wonderful flavor that you can’t get enough of!

In what container should we put the ingredients to dry?
After cooking the fruits, you can flatten the fruit leather on a tray to dry up. You can cover the tray with the following:

• A piece of plastic or cellophane
• Parchment paper
• Aluminum foil
• Cooking sheets

You can grease the paper or plastic with a pastry brush dipped in oil, but it’s not necessary.

Important- remember not to cover the fruit leathers with things like plastic, they won’t dry and might become moldy. A basket or net fabric is alright since it allows airflow. So, if you live in an area with a lot of dust in the air, either keep the fruit leather inside the house or cover it with a basket.

How thick should Lavashak be?

Lavashak shouldn’t be too thick or too thin. If it’s too thin, the final product becomes stiff and hard to chew. If it’s too thick, it’ll barely dry up.

1-3 millimeters is a good range for thickness. Don’t let it get thicker than 5mm.

How to dry Persian Lavashak?

In Iran, during summer, The Lavashaks are left under the sunlight on rooftops and they dry up in 2-3 days.

In other seasons or other parts of the world like Europe, that don’t get much sunlight, you can use an oven. Drying Lavashaks in the oven takes less time.

Lavashak drying methods:

• Under the sun
• In the oven
• Solardom
• Heater or radiator
• In front of a fan

Making Lavashak under the sun

After cooking the fruits, cover a tray with plastic or cellophane. Spread the fruit puree on the tray and leave it under the sun for 2-4 days.

The exact duration depends on the thickness and water amount. If it’s thin and the puree’s water has vaporized properly, it dries up faster.

You might need to turn it over so that the other side receives sunlight as well.

Making Lavashak in the oven

1. Line the oven tray with parchment paper or any of the previously mentioned options.
2. You can grease the paper with a pastry brush.
3. Spread the fruit puree on the tray.
4. Set the oven to the lowest temperature, like 110-120° C.
5. Put the tray on the highest rack for 3-4 hours.
6. Don’t fully close the oven door. Leave it half-open, or slightly less than half.
7. Your Lavashak is ready when the edges change color and become darker. When you touch the surface, it shouldn’t stick to your hand and must be dry.

-If the edges of your Lavashak are too dry while the other parts are still a bit moist, take it out of the oven and leave it in the room to help it lose moisture.

-If the oven gets too hot, turn it off and on again. Do this a few times so the Lavashak dries due to the indirect heat and doesn’t receive too much heat.

-Another solution is leaving the oven door fully open, or taking the tray out of the oven, then putting it back inside again. In other words, you should do something to prevent your Lavashak from receiving too much heat, or it’s gonna burn!

-Remember not to let it dry too much, it’ll be hard to chew and will get bitter. This is a burnt puree, not a Lavashak. A burnt apple lavashak:

Another image: burnt pomegranate lavashak:

What if my fruit roll is too dried and stuck to the parchment paper?

If you put your fruit leather in the oven and closed the door shut, it might get burned or too dry. It gets stuck to the parchment paper, hard to separate. To peel off the parchment paper in such cases, follow these steps:

1. Spray the back of the fruit leather with water. (paper part)
2. Let the paper soak like this for 20 seconds. Carefully peel off the parchment paper.

When is lavashak ready?

When you tap on the lavashak and nothing sticks to your fingers and the pureed water has evaporated, the lavashak is ready.

If it is still a little sticky, remove it from the oven and leave it at room temperature for a few hours to dry completely. If staying in the oven too much, it will taste bitter.

How to dry fruit leather in a dehydrator?

To do this, you will need a dehydrator, and a metal tray smaller than the tray of your dehydrator. This tray will be put inside the dehydrator.

After preparing the puree, spread it on the tray. Oil the bottom of the tray. Put the metal tray on top of the dehydrator’s tray and let it dry.

You can also use a thin aluminum foil or a piece of parchment paper, put them on the dehydrator’s tray, and spread the puree on them.

There are also fruit roll sheets that are specialized for fruit leathers and you can directly spread the puree on them.

Turn the dehydrator on. After 5-6 hours, your fruit leather is ready. The exact time needed depends on the fruit roll’s thickness and the amount of water in it.

Apple Fruit Leather

Apple is one of the most available and characteristic fruits. Due to its abundance, to prevent apples from spoiling in the refrigerator, be sure to try apple fruit leather.
This lavashak usually has a sweet taste, unless it is made with sour apples.

Cherry Fruit Leather

Cherries and tart cherries are two popular fruits, their lavashak is also very lovely. Tart cherries have smaller seeds and a sour taste, and if you love the sour taste as I do, this is a great choice.
Cherry seeds are larger than tart cherries and their taste is sweet.

Cherry fruit leather has a sweet taste, you can give it an attractive salty taste by adding some salt. Their recipe is the same. Try cherry fruit leather recipe.

Pomegranate Lavashak

Pomegranate Lavashak is an excellent and delicious fruit roll. Making it is the same as other fruit leathers, you need to make a thick puree of the fruit, cook it and dry it. I’ve explained it in a separate post. I recommend you check out my “Pomegranate fruit leather or Pomegranate lavashak” post.

Kiwi Fruit Leather

Kiwifruit is another choice for making lavashak. If the kiwis are unripe and sour, you will have sour fruit leather, and if they are ripe and sweet, the final yield will be sour-sweet.

Apart from its lovely taste, it feels good when the seeds go under the teeth. If this fruit is available to you, be sure to make kiwi fruit leather.

Plum Fruit Leather

There are types of plums all over the world; Yellow plum, black plum, red plum, and other types. All types of plums are great for making lavashak.

Black plum has a sour and delicious taste and its lavashak is excellent. You can leave the plums with the skin or remove the skin; This is done by placing a colander over a pot. read more details in the plum fruit leather post.

How to slice the fruit rolls?

After drying up, peel the parchment paper off the fruit leather. Use a scissor or knife to cut the fruit leather into desired shapes. You can cut them into bands and roll them.

Then, store the kiwi fruit rolls in a glass or plastic container, and close that cap. You can cut them into squares, keep them in plastic bags and tie the top of them to eliminate airflow.

What can we eat Lavashak with?

You can eat Lavashak by itself, or combine it with other things to make it taste hundreds of times better!

Ways to make fruit rolls taste better:

-Add barberry to the ingredients of your Lavashak to make it sourer. Soak the barberries in water beforehand.

-Use one spoonful of lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid.

-You can add pomegranate molasses after the Lavashaks are ready. Cut the fruit leathers into strips and roll them. Droplets of pomegranate paste falling from in between the rolls is mesmerizing!

-Cover the fruit rolls in pomegranate paste and dried cherries, this is a mouth-watering combo!

Tips

-To make Lavashak at home, use ripe fruits.

-Don’t throw away the fruits that have been sitting in the fridge for a few days, make Lavashak with them!

-Sour pomegranates that are not much popular and might go to waste are great choices for making Persian fruit rolls.

How to make Lavashak Persian candy?

To make Lavashak candy, first, prepare a soft Lavashak paste. Then, you can make Persian fruit leather candy out of it.

It’s very simple, you just need to choose fruit leathers that are soft and preferably thick. Homemade fruit leathers are usually thin and dry, making them unsuitable for this recipe. Soft and thick factory-made Lavashaks are usually found in stores.

How to make Lavashak candy?

Tear off the plastic cover of the fruit leather. Knead it in your hands until it softens. Dip your hands in water and oil if needed.

The Lavashak eventually becomes soft and moldable. Be careful not to use too much water or the paste becomes soggy.

Grab a small piece of the paste and put it in a silicon mold. As you can see in the picture below, a leaf shaped silicon mold is used here.

When the paste takes the shape of the mold, remove it from the mold immediately. If it sticks to the mold, leave it in the fridge for 10 minutes. Once the paste hardens, it becomes easier to remove.

To make round fruit candies, spread the paste in the desired thickness on a flat surface using a roller. Before spreading it, oil the surface. Then, oil a round cutter and cut the candies. Instead of using a round cutter, you can spread the Lavashaks inside a silicon mold with round bars.

Lavashak storage:

-Separate the Lavashaks from the paper after they have dried up. Use a knife or scissors to cut them into preferred pieces, or roll them up.

-You can cut the fruit leather without separating it from the plastic.

-Keep them in lidded storage in the fridge. They are edible for 2-3 weeks and until whenever they don’t become moldy.

-If they stick to each other, put a piece of cellophane or parchment paper in between them.

Conclusion:

In this post, we discussed the Persian fruit leather recipe. Peaches and apples are the best fruits for making sweet and sour fruit leather. Cherries and black plums are the best choices for sour fruit leather. You can also mix a few fruits and make multi-fruit Lavashaks which are perfect.

Make sure to add pomegranate paste and dried cherries to your Lavashak and try this insanely good combo! This way of serving Lavashak is pretty common in Iran.

If you have any questions about making these delicious Iranian Lavashak, ask away in the comments! I have a lot of experience with making Lavashak and will gladly answer your questions.