Strawberry Powder

that's just for you

A few weeks ago I read that learning a new language is a chance to live another life.¹ When Jill Barber sings in French the music crawls into her body in a different way. It lifts her arms, it moves her shoulders, it closes her eyes. The double base, the grand piano and the violin play a role too; together the musicians create a soundscape that is a shift from her usual music, her usual movement. We listened in a church with the warm July night heavy in the air. People waved paper fans and gently swayed like members of a southern congregation. There could have been an amen and a hallelujah as Jill sang en français. Jill was performing songs from her french album, Encore² as part of the Halifax Jazz Fest. I don’t know if singing in French feels like living another life for Jill. But the music does embody her in a different way, as though she was gifting it as much to herself as she was to us. It was something precious, just for her. 

I thought of “gifting myself something precious, just for me” this morning as I made myself breakfast. I am good at elevating a meal when someone is coming over; the idea of gathering, of celebration, of hospitality gives me a jolt of creativity: I snip flowers, I pull out a tablecloth, I put lime slices in water. It’s performative, but the collective kind. In the morning at breakfast when it’s usually just me, things are simpler. I fry an egg or I spoon thick yogurt into a bowl. I top it with granola. I melt frozen berries in a saucepan to spoon on top, if that’s all the fruit I can find. These daily actions are more nourishing than special. That’s why I found it so curious that I spent four hours this week dehydrating strawberries and pulverizing the dried fruit so in the morning I could sprinkle red dust over granola and yogurt. A flourish, a pop of colour, a secret flavour to start the day, just for me. 

My aunt Sandra loves applying lipstick, just for herself. That takes just ten seconds. It’s the spirit of the message that we’re going for here.

I say just for me because when I offered a tiny sampling of strawberry powder to my son thinking it tasted exactly like the commercial dried fruit leather he has always loved and wished I bought more often, he crinkled his nose and said, it’s so strong, so tart! Well yes. Powder has to hold its own when danced across a bowl of tangy yogurt. 

Making powdered fruit wasn’t my original idea. Camille Becerra’s cookbook Bright Cooking slid through the mailbox last month and I’ve been dreaming in colour ever since. She is a chef who smears bright green, red, yellow sauces at the base of her bowls. She tops food with dried flowers, seed mixes and dusts. It’s all colour and crunch and health-giving texture. I’ve been circling the book, dipping in but almost too scared to get going. The food requires new pantry items for me, new tools in the tool box. But this week I stopped swaying in front of the skipping ropes, no longer scared to double dutch, and jumped in. 

Becerra trained in fine dining restaurants and macrobiotic health centres. She is a chef in professional kitchens, she hosts pop ups, she is a stylist. Pulverizing dehydrated fruits and vegetables is familiar to her. In her book she notes that it’s easy to find fruit powders online these days, but they can also be made at home by dehydrating and blending ingredients yourself. The instructions are vague, but I figured I could do it. So I pulled out two pints of strawberries that needed to be eaten and got to work. 

What follows is a recipe just for you. Take the lengthly instruction in the spirit of self care. You may not have several hours to putter around while fruit dehydrates; not all endeavours need to be so complicated.

Preheat the oven to 175F. This is the hottest my oven will go on the dehydration setting. I just learned my oven has a dehydration setting. I’ve had the oven for six years. I know.³

Begin by rinsing a pint (about 575g) of strawberries in a colander. Shake them gently to dry. Cover a large cookie sheet (baking tray) with parchment paper. Hull the strawberries and slice them thinly, about four slices per strawberry. Place the slices on the parchment (a pint of sliced strawberries should fill the sheet.) Slide the sheet into the oven and leave for 2 hours. The slices should be dried on the bottom and slightly damp on top. Leave to cool for a few minutes then painstakingly flip each little slice, taking a moment to appreciate the way the strawberry juice stains the parchment in coin-sized circles. Return the sheet to the oven for 30 minutes or so, then turn off the oven and leave the slices to dry in there for another hour, or until the surfaces are dry.

I did mention this was an activity that takes time. Go outside and pull some weeds. Go back inside and put proper shoes on, the kind that protect your feet from soil creeping between your toes. I have a pair of rubber garden shoes⁴ the colour of old gum erasers that are perfect for the job. Throw a stick to your dog. Edge the lawn, if the lawn is small like mine. Listen to an audio book. Pull out bits off turf, goutweed, spindly forget-me-nots that have spread into places where they don’t belong. And of course pull those dreaded green Japanese beetles off the leaves of the plants they love and drop them into a bucket of soapy water. It’s an uphill battle, staying on top of those things, but if you have a few minutes, it’s a satisfying task. 

If you don’t have a garden, go for a walk. Take a bath. Sit down and read. This is a moment just for you. 

When the strawberry slices are sufficiently dry, peel them off the parchment. At this point you can put them in a jar and leave them this way, pulling out the little red chips when you need a pop of intense chewy strawberry-ness on granola or oatmeal or something like that. But if you have a spice grinder, why not make powder? 

I pull my spice grinder from the back of the drawer. It smells like the cloves I ground last Christmas, probably for my grandmother’s ginger cookies. Cloves are the dried flower buds of the clove tree. The pungent little spikes have a strong aroma that explodes when ground. Powdered cloves still sticks to the inside of the grinder, glued by the oils released inside the cloves. I add a handful of raw rice to the grinder and blitz it to a fine powder. This is meant to capture the smell of whatever was left behind, but I have to blitz another handful in order to make a dent in the scent. I give it a wipe with a wet cloth, follow up with a dry cloth, then get to work on the dried strawberry slices. I blitz them in batches and sieve the powder into a jar.⁵ I make a mess; red dust falls around the jar. I dip my finger into the red powder. It tastes like strawberry fruit leather. I am a scientist now, a flavour distiller. Then I hang the piece of parchment paper in the window creating stained glass inspired by a strawberry cheetah print. A piece of art, just for me.

1. In Claire Cameron’s Books I Love on Substack - Read it Here ❤️

2. Jill Barber’s album, Encore. Jill also writes a substack with the best name in the biz - A Note to Follow So

3. Most ovens only go as low as 200F / 95C. If that’s what you have, set it for 200F and check in at the one hour mark - too high an oven for too long a time will melt your strawberry slices into the parchment. Of course if you have a dehydrator, use it! I’m considering buying one. I’ll have to store it in the basement next to the Christmas decorations, but I think it’ll be worth it.

4. Slowly Slowly will hopefully be getting them in again soon

5. Powders will keep for a few months in a covered jar