I’m four days into my Whole30 Challenge and the lack of snacky foods is starting to get to me.
I was thinking about picking up some dried apples – since they’re yummy and presumably Whole30 compliant.
But then I realized that that would require another trip to the grocery store. Plus I seemed to recall them being around $1.50 per bag. Which seems nuts since there’s probably 1/4 of an apple in each bag.
Which is when I started to think about… Homemade apple chips.
I read a bunch of recipes online. They all required either a dehydrator, or superhuman patience (“cook at 150 degrees for a bazillion hours”-patience). I have neither a deyhydrator, nor patience (superhuman or otherwise).
So I decided to wing it. Turns out winging it tastes pretty good!
It also turns out that when you can’t eat sugar, cinnamon tastes really, really good.
Homemade Apple Chips
Ingredients:
- Apple
- Cinnamon
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
2. Cut apple in half, remove seeds and slice each half as thinly as possible.
3. Sprinkle liberally with cinnamon.
4. Bake for 30-45 minutes. Remove from oven and flip over the apple slices. Sprinkle with cinnamon again (can’t have too much of a good thing in this case) and bake for another 30-45 minutes.
We baked ours for a total of about an hour and twenty minutes. Some of our chips were crispy, some were a bit rubbery. All were delicious.
If you want crispier apple chips, cut them as thinly as humanly possible. You could try using a mandolin — but I had a very bad experience with a mandolin once and will be sticking with knives from now on.
If you want super crispy apple chips, you could also try baking them for a bit longer — maybe as much as an hour per side.
As you can tell, this recipe is incredibly easy. And the actual prep time is minimal. But since you need to flip them half way thru, you can’t really stick-em-in-and-forget-em. So plan to make these on a day when you’ll be around the kitchen anyway (we finished up some homeschooling lessons while they baked).
Have you ever baked or dehydrated your own fruit snacks? Please share all the details in the comments section below.
I make apple chips all the time. I do it a little differently than you. I core an apple and cut it Ito slices with the hole in the center. Sometimes I peel it, more often I don’t, there are lots of vitamins in the skin. I slice the apples and get 4-6 slices per apple. Put parchment on a baking sheet and lay the apples on the baking sheet with nothing else. Put in 200 degree oven and cook overnight. The different thickness of apples will result in different textures, thinner slices will be like chips, thicker slices will be like the dried apples you buy in the dried fruit section of your store. I give kosher cooking lessons, demonstrated these a couple of weeks ago, and my ladies now make them regularly.
Mandolins scare me too! I have a Pampered Chef Apple peeler, corer, slicer that works beautifully! It makes the slices pretty thin, possibly reducing your baking time?!
I’ll have to look in to that – thanks, Mere!
I just got a food dehydrator for Valentine’s day and this recipe would be perfect! http://thejewishlady.com/valentines-day-gift/
I make them on passover for a great snack. I just core, slice thinly, place on parchment lined cookie sheets on lowest temp. I put them in right before I head to bed and wake up to yummy apple chips
Thanks for your recipe! I made the apple chips and they came out really good! I sliced the apples in the food processor so they were really thin and I didn’t need to flip them over. They came out crispy and tasty. A definite hit!
Yay! So glad you liked them, too! My kids are already asking for batch #3. Good to know that the food processor blade worked well, too.
I soak mine in lemon juice first as we like them tart!
I’ve made these about 6 times since finding your recipe about a week ago. I had a dehydrator but ditched it because it took up too much space and I didn’t use it often enough. This was way easier and just as tasty! Thanks!
YAY! That makes me so happy – glad to help you declutter your kitchen… and enjoy some yummy, easy apple chips!
is that 250 Celsius or farenhight ? (1 and a half hours seems a long time at such a high heat if it’s Celsius :/
It’s fahrenheit, Mel!
Hey Mara!
I tried out your recipe and they turned out great!
To get them really dry I had to leave the oven door open a couple of centimetres while the apple chips were baking, though. Still – so easy and so delicious! Thank you for sharing!
Here’s how mine turned out: http://wp.me/p49flI-8p
Cheers,
Christina
They look great – and I love that you had enough to put them in a jar… We couldn’t keep them on the pan!
Good morning! I just linked to this apple chips recipe in my apple tips and recipe roundup on my page growwildmychild.com ! Thanks for your inspiration!