"Drying Sweet Cherries Experiment...."

I washed a few of the flexible mesh liners yesterday in preparation for drying some sweet cherries I had left from the 2 quarts I bought a few days ago.  I would estimate there was perhaps a pint of cherries.  The dehydrator needs to have at least 4 of the drying trays/racks on the unit for it to work properly, so this is how it looks set up and ready to go.

Unfortunately, I do not have a cherry pitter (YET!) so taking a small paring knife, I halved each cherry.    It truly did not take as long as I had feared, but my hands were red with juice when I was done, and I was ready to layer the halved cherries in the dehydrator quite quickly.

The instructions said to position the cherries with the skin side down to help eliminate as many "drips" as possible, plus any juice would then dry onto the piece of fruit.

I had enough cherry halves to fill (although I'm sure I could have positioned the pieces closer together) one and one half trays/racks, each having a mesh liner underneath the fruit.  It is a flexible mesh liner to make it easier to peel any fruit off that has stuck while drying.  The instructions also suggested placing a  "fruit roll up liner" on the bottom tray to catch any juice that was able to drip down through the trays/liners.  I had no such "excessive" dripping.   ;)

As you would expect, the cherries, when dried, shrank in size, so what was a pint of fresh fruit, became maybe 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of dried fruit.  It is delicious though.....all that goodness concentrated into a smaller package.   ;)  Yes, I would label this experiment a success!