Sunday, July 13, 2014

July 13, 2014

And now for something completely different.

Home made "Candied Cinnamon Apple Chips"

You have a craving for something to snack on and have a giant stash of potatoe chips in the cupboard, as well as two apples. A moral dilemma. Apples are healthy, chips are not. What will you grab? Mind, though apples are "healthy", most contain an average of about 19 grams of sugar.

At any rate, instead of defaulting to opening a bag of chips full of fat, let's bake some apples. (And we'll add a ton of sugar to make them just as bad if not worse, but at least twice as tasty!)

Apple chips are surprisingly easy to make, though they do cost some time.
I assure you it's well worth the wait though.

Ingredients

* 1-2 Apples (Any brand)
* Cinnamon (Optional, but very tasty)
* Powdered Sugar (Optional)



Tools

* Apple drill
* Thin slicer or potatoe knife
* Oven capable of 225'F or 105'C
* Clock, timer, stopwatch or mobile phone with alarm clock


Preparation

1. Wash the apples
2. Core the apples (not mandatory, but it'll make slicing them a lot easier)


3. Pre-heat the oven to 225'F or 105'C. Don't change the temperature as we want them to dehydrate, not turn them to charcoal.
4. Slice the apples very thin. About 1 mm is just right. (That is about 0.04 inches for all you folk with the weird ancient metric system) If you have a potato slicer or thin slicer, those will generally have a good size by default.
If your thin slicer isn't quite the same width as your apple then you can slice the apple by twisting it on the blade like you were twisting a screw, this way you'll get a nice long single slice which you can then break up into the desired shapes. (See image below)


5. Apply the cinnamon and sugar. This can be done in two ways depending on your preference.
5.1. Pre mix the powdered sugar and cinnamon into a bowl, the put each apple slice in the mixture before putting it ready for the oven.
5.2. Lay out all the apple slices (as I did in the image below), then richly apply the cinnamon and sugar on one side.
6. Insert the apple slices into the oven and leave for 1 hour.


7. After 1 hour, turn the slices around and set the clock for another hour. You'll notice they're probably still a little soft. The next hour will fix that.
8. Remove the slices from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes.
9. Dig in!


Variations


* Instead of 2x 1 hour, bake 2x 0.5 hours for a more chewy effect.
* Using "Granny smith" apples instead of sweet apples will add a nice sour bite.
* Soaking the apples in vinegar for a few hours before dipping them in salt instead of sugar and cinnamon.
* Using granulated instead of powdered sugar will add an extra crunch.
* Using bananas instead of apples is perfectly possible. Make sure you use the "Plantain" type though.
* Peach, pineapple and pear are tasty variations as well.
* Use stevia extract instead of powdered sugar.

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