Freeze dried apples with molasses

Wanted to do this as a little treat, hope it turns out well

Hoping freeze dried apples with molasses are super yummy!!! I already had apples all chopped up and frozen, so I put them on the trays and then tried to brush molasses on them. Of course, that didn’t work very well, so I ended up just kind of drizzling the molasses on the apples.

After doing it and posting a photo, so many better ideas were given to me regarding how to do this. First, I should have heated up the molasses to make it easier to spread and brush onto things. Duh! I know this, but did not do it, lol. Someone else suggested putting the molasses in a bowl and then adding the apples and getting them covered that way. Also a much more brilliant way of doing it than what I did. Ah well, too late:)

For this batch, I had four trays of the apples with molasses on them, did one tray without molasses. The apples were all pre-frozen. The molasses was not. I started the Ice Queen (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium), and after the 15 minute cool down it does, I put everything in.

Next time, I will heat the molasses and coat the apples in it, and THEN freeze it all together. I think that’ll be better. Still excited to see how these turn out!

These are so dang good!!

Ok, so the molasses kinda blew up a bit in the freeze dryer, lol. I will definitely have to clean the tops of the shelves off. Molasses is easy to clean though, usually just warm water will do the trick. And these are so good, it was totally worth it:)

So the molasses was super bubbled up on some, which is where way too much molasses pooled when I was drizzling it on. I just smooshed all the huge bubbles before eating some and putting it away.

I put these into half gallon mason jars and didn’t even both sealing them. I plan to give one to fam and I will most definitely eat the others well before they’d go bad! So no reason to waste an oxygen absorber and time sealing, lol.

How long did the freeze dried apple with molasses take?

The Ice Queen stopped at 18 hours, but it wasn’t quite done. I went an extra two hours. This brought the total time to 20 hours. If I had spread the molasses evenly, and in a thinner spread instead of having huge pools of it, I’m guessing it would have been 16 to 18 hours.

Did the two hour defrost after this batch, and once the defrost is done I’ll clean it. The inside rack can be removed for cleaning. Just be careful, it’s connected in the back, so remove slowly and then unhook the little electric thingy prior to removing it. It’s much easier to have two people do this: one to remove the rack and hold it, and one to disconnect the wires.

Happy freeze drying!!

Oh wow🤣 so will definitely do the molasses differently next time.. making sure there aren’t any huge pools of it. A thin, even layer would have done better and been less messy. That said, these are AMAAAAZING!🥳 pic.twitter.com/FDKOA5T64T

— Buck Hills Farm (@buck_hills_farm) February 12, 2024