This luscious recipe is sponsored by my friends at Ontario Apple Growers —local growers of high quality delicious apples, helping us all eat, snack and live healthy! Make sure to look for the Foodland logo so you know you’re buying Ontario grown apples!
I love that every year around this time I start looking for healthier meals and snacks. So how about some healthy delicious and crunchy Baked Apple Fries dipped in a sweet Raspberry Sauce? Totally deliciously addictive in a fabulous way 🙂 Every bite is a crunch of oats, seeds and nuts with a tender sweet baked apple. Whether you decide to go for even more sweetness and dip that in berry sauce or not, you’re in for a real treat!!
There’s something about apples that just feels perfect when you want to lighten up your meals and snacks. It’s probably the first ingredient that comes to mind. Ironically, when I crave something divine and decadent, it seems like apples come to mind right away! Something like this MUST try Swiss Apple Tart Recipe for example, is pure lush!
Well today we’re chatting healthy stuff. And for the record I don’t create, stick or think resolutions at all. I’m probably one of those people who are most comfortable when they let things go, which isn’t the most brilliant thing, but it feels the most comfortable to me. So healthy meals and snacks don’t feel like a chore or resolution, but rather a treat on their own. I mean just look at those baked apple fries, how can that feel anything but a treat?!
First of all, here’s an amazing Apple GUIDE to all the many different varieties of apples and how best to enjoy them. I find myself often reaching for Gala apples more than any because I just happen to favor that sweetness, texture and crunch. And the beauty of recipes (and life!) is that you pick your favorite and it’ll work like a charm. So by all means don’t feel like you need to stick to the the type of apple I used here— which is Empire apples by the way 🙂
Ideally, I would love to coat my apple sticks (which you can also make into wedges if you prefer that) in an egg mixture. However I wanted to keep this baked apple fries recipe vegan so I coated them in a mixture of chia seeds and water which worked beautifully! Similarly, the crunch factor which is the granola here can be sweetened with brown sugar or maple syrup to make this recipe totally vegan.
When it comes to the granola mix, use your favorite seeds, spices and nuts. I love plain old fashioned oats, flax seeds, quinoa seeds, more chia seeds, chopped pecans and plenty of cinnamon. You can certainly use ginger, chai spice, apple pie spice, swap nuts around, add more seeds, take away some..etc. All you’ll need is to press down the sticky chia water coated apples into the granola mix.
These apple fries bake for about 20 minutes until the granola coating is crunchy and golden. Here’s a tip about these delicious fries, the crunch on the apples will depend on the thickness of the apple fries. So thick apple fries or apple wedges will have a crunch to the apple, while slim cut apple fries will bake to really soft apples. It’s totally your choice. Mine were cut pretty thin so the apple was soft.
Now the question would be, to dip or no to dip in raspberry sauce? Well since we’ve baked and not fried our apple fries, I say we can indulge in a sweet raspberry sauce 🙂 I love this simple sauce which I’ve used before in many cheesecake recipes. It’s basically microwaving raspberries, sugar, water and cornstarch until a thick sauce magically happens! As you whisk the berries into the sauce, they will all mush up and your sauce will be smooth.
I should probably say that blueberry sauce would be terrific too, but I opted for raspberry sauce so it looks like ketchup with my fries.
This baked apple fries recipe, call it snack, treat, however you feel like it, will blow you away! It’s super easy and delicious, plus it has this addictive pick me up finger food quality which you can’t resist 🙂 And above all, it’s really healthy, good for you and seriously fills you up! So give it a try and you’ll see 🙂 Enjoy!
Baked Apple Fries With Raspberry Sauce
Ingredients
Apples:
- 4 Empire apples or your favorite, washed, deseeded and cut into sticks
Coating:
- 1 tablespoon of chia seeds
- 3 tablespoons of water
Granola Crunch:
- 1 cup of oats
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans
- 1/3 cup of mixed seeds flax, quinoa, chia, sunflower
- 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons of oil
- 1/4 cup of Maple syrup or brown sugar or honey
Raspberry Sauce:
- 2/3 cup of raspberries fresh or frozen
- 1/2 cup of water
- 1 Tablespoon of sugar more or less to taste
- 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Mix the chia seed coating in a small bowl and mix the granola crunch coating in a bigger deep dish. Take an apple stick at a time and dip it in the chia seed coating then into the granola crunch coating.
- Place the apple stick on the prepared baking tray.
- Repeat with the remaining apple sticks and bake the tray for about 20 minutes until the granola coating is golden and crisp.
- In the meantime, make the raspberry sauce by mixing all ingredients in a microwave safe bowl.
- Microwave the sauce for 2-3 minutes until bubble and thick. Use a whisk to whisk the sauce and mush up the berries till smooth. Adjust sweetness and thickness of the sauce by adding extra water if needed or extra cornstarch and microwave an extra minute. Allow the sauce to cool before serving with the baked apple fries. Enjoy!
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