Just a few days ago Canderel challenged me to come up with a low-calorie recipe. This morning I received my Canderal sweetener and a small shopping voucher so I decided to knuckle down and get straight to work. My first instinct was to bake a cake, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that a cake would not be an ideal solution… after all try as you might you can’t really resolve all your problems with cake alone 😉

In my head I browsed through endless recipes from the past which would be suitable and after a while I stumbled onto a blast from the past – Home Baked Apple Chips, perfect I thought to myself.

Growing up, both my parents and my grandparents had allotments, so in the harvest season there was always an abundance of fresh fruit. Being frugal by nature we would always turn them into something else, something more suitable for storage over those long winter months. A lot of apples were therefore turned into dried apples. They didn’t look like my chips here, they were bigger and chunkier but the principle is the same… they make for a perfect, healthy snack and best of all they have a very low calorie count.

So let’s make some Home Baked Apple Chips.

Ingredients:

2 large apples

3tsp Canderel granulated sweetener

1tsp cinnamon

1 lemon (optional)

Method:

Preheat oven to a very cool 120C (fan assisted).

Line two large baking trays with non stick baking parchment.

In a small bowl mix your Canderel granulated sweetener and the cinnamon.

Make sure you have a fine sieve ready for action.

Finely slice your apples. I don’t have any fully developed chef like knife skills, so I used my Oxo Chef’s Mandolin Slicer. Using a mandolin allowed me to have all my slices of equal thickness which makes baking them later on so much easier.

Place your sliced apples on earlier prepared baking trays.

If you are going for the lemon option, this is the time to do it. The lemon will stop your apples from going brown from oxidation but at the same time it will inevitably add a hint of lemon flavour to your apple slices. I skipped the lemon step this time round but if you are opting in simple cut your lemon in half and juice it on top of your apples.

Using your fine mesh sieve, sprinkle your Canderel and cinnamon mixture all over the apples.

Pop them into the oven and set the timer to 30 minutes.

After this time remove both trays from the oven and turn your apple slices over.

Pop them back into the oven for a further 30 minutes.

Once the time is up, remove from the oven and allow them to cool.

When completely cool store them in an airtight container, if they are not for immediate consumption (be warned though, you will want to try one to see what they taste like which in turn leads to trying another one and then as if by magic you only end up putting three pieces into the airtight storage container).

Top Tips:
Do not be tempted to bake them without lining the trays… I know as I did it and the whole batch was ruined as they arc welded themselves to the bottom of the trays!

Your baking time will depend on the thickness of your apple slices (as a guide mine where around 2mm thick)– the thinner the apples, the shorter the cooking time, so please watch them a bit more closely when you bake them for the first time just in case they will need a bit less time. When they start to bend and the edges start to lift this would be your sign that they are almost ready to be turned over… give them another 5 minutes and then perform the flips.

Do you like fruit chips?

Have you ever made home baked apple chips?

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