For the second time ever, today I’m posting the recipe for a snack! I love healthy food. LOVE. Unfortunately, I also love hamburgers, bacon, cheese, fries, baguettes…you get the gist. I try hard to eat healthy, but I have no self-control around anything crunchy or salty. My solution is to keep junk out of my house, and to try to have healthy options readily available. Frankly, I’m running out of ideas.
This weekend, though, I thought of a new healthy snack: apple chips. I’m really glad I did, because they’re good! Plus, they help you use up the huge bag of apples that you get while apple picking. I usually just make apple crisp or apple pies, but apple chips might be the wave of the future (at least in my house). I literally can’t stop eating them! They’re crunchy, tart, sweet, a little spicy, and I don’t feel guilty when I eat them. In fact, I’m eating some right now!
This recipe is pretty basic, so you can improvise if you want. Try making some sugar-free chips, or add more spices like nutmeg or pumpkin pie spice. You can cook them less to make them more of a chewy snack, or really bake them until they’re crispy. Test everything out, and see what you like. Keep in mind that the picture here doesn’t really do them justice; I promise they taste better than they look!
Apple Chips
Each apple makes about 9 chips; each half sheet tray (shown above) holds about 1.5 apples
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 2+ hours
Ingredients:
1 Apple (I used Cortland)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 250F. Core the apple using an apple corer. If you have a mandoline, set the width to 1/4″, and carefully slice the apple crosswise through the core. If you don’t have a mandoline, do your best to make even 1/4″ slices with a sharp knife. Place the slices on a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet.
Mix the sugar and cinnamon together, and sprinkle evenly over the apple slices. Bake for 2 hours; if you prefer for the slices to be crispier, you can bake them for an additional 20 minutes or so; if doing this, check them every 10 minutes or so to make sure they’re not overdone.
Turn off the oven, and leave the chips out on top of the stove for 2-10 hours to dry out a bit more. Alternatively, you can leave them in the warm oven to dry out further. Store them in an airtight container.
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