Apple Bake Recipe

One of my favourite parts of hosting workshops is baking tea treats and cooking meals for lunch. The day before my first Zoom workshop I found myself filling my trolley with baling ingredients – till the penny dropped…

For years people have been asking me for recipes. I don’t typically follow a recipe. Instead, I see what’s in the fridge and in the grocery cupboard. I think it comes from years of being a Woolworths employee and shopping for waste (food products that have reached their sell-by date) and my mother’s creative cooking. When I cook, I read several recipes and combine them. So each time I cook or bake its a slightly different variation on the theme.

My mother never turned on the oven unless it was full. So to assuage any inherited guilt of partially empty ovens I have collected recipes for easy-to-make dishes to fill up all the shelves in the oven. This apple bake was one of them.

Tuesdays were Kundalini Yoga and workshop days at Inner Peace Healing. Many of the yoga students joined the workshops after class. So I served the apple bake as an in-between yoga and workshop nourishment. On Munay Journeys and Shamanic Constellation Journeys participants started arriving early so that they could have some apple bake before the workshop started.

The secrets of a good apple bake

  • Red-skinned apples make for firmer apple pieces. Granny Smith apples go soft and mushy.
  • Don’t peel your apples. I use the Triple Orange veg and fruit wash and leave the apples for a while to clean off pesticides
  • I have an old apple cutter and corer that cuts the apple pieces into thin wedges and has a tiny centre core so the apple is not wasted. So if you find one in your grandma’s kitchen grab it if it is not being used. Its similar to this one for sale on Amazon. The locally sold ones tend to cut large cores and fewer slices of apples. When you chop up your apples keep the pieces thinner.
  • Bake the apples first before putting on the topping – creates a yummy caramelised taste

The picture shows apple tartlets I made for a family constellation workshop I held down beside the river.

 

The Anchorage Apple Bake Recipe

Ingredients

  • Apples – how many depends on the size of the dish I’m using. At least one packet since I love having leftovers
  • Spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, mixed spice, allspice, ginger. Whatever is in your spice rack. More cinnamon, less nutmeg and cardamon. I don’t use allspice and mixed spice together.
  • Topping. Use some or all of these ingredients for the topping
    • about 1 tablespoon of coconut oil
    • flour or gluten-free flour
    • almond flour
    • oats
    • seeds – sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, flaxseed
    • coconut – desiccated coconut and coconut flakes
    • almonds – whole or flakes
    • pecan nuts
    • one teaspoon of brown sugar
    • spices
  • Optional berries – fresh or frozen

Method

  • Cut and season apples
    • Wash the apples well as no need to peel the apples.
    • You can use one of those all-in-one apple corers and cutters.  
    • You want to have about a 3-layer thickness of chopped apples. If too deep not enough of the apples are caramelised
    • Sprinkle on spices so that there is light dusting over the apples. Mix up the apples so that they are all covered with spices.
  • Bake the apples
    • Oven temperature is around 180 degrees. More often than not something else may be in the oven – so it could be lower or higher
    • Cook with a lid or cover with foil initially for about 20 minutes till the apples have started to soften
    • Remove the covering to caramelise the apples. I may reduce the oven temperature to around 160 degrees for about 20 minutes.
  • Make the topping with what is in your grocery cupboard
    • I have a small food processor which I use to combine 1T hard coconut oil with 2T flour, 2T desiccated coconut, 1t sugar and spices.
    • If using nuts and seeds may add them after the first chopping so that they are not cut too small.
    • Add toppings e.g. coconut flakes or almond flakes that you don’t want to chop into smaller pieces
    • Mix together.
    • Sprinkle over apples so that just covered. You don’t want it too thick.
    • If you have made too much – pop the surplus into the freezer for next time round
  • Add berries if you want – they can be fresh or frozen
  • Sprinkle on topping
  • Put back in the oven till its browned – about 15 – 30 minutes
    • Often cook the apples the day before, add berries and topping and bake the next day

Serving Suggestions

  • Sometimes with a topping, sometimes without.
  • It’s usually served with double-cream yoghurt. Coconut yoghurt is delicious with it too. Sometimes with lashings of honey poured over the yoghurt.
  • If made with no topping then a side of homemade granola is delicious sprinkled on top of the yoghurt.
  • For finger food make tiny tartlets – as the picture