Kids will love this.
We often buy ourselves a box of apples at the Sydney Markets. For $8 a box of roughly 8kg you can pick up some gorgeous eating apples. That’s not something we often do! Yes we do like eating apples, but we also love to buy apples for other purposes. Like apple pie filling for instance. You honestly don’t need perfect apples for that. So we often pick up bargains like $1 a box for slightly bruised apples. Definitely makes going to the markets worthwhile when you can score yourself a deal like that!
Anyway, our freezer is pretty full currently and the box of apples we have downstairs has barely been dented. I made roast pork the other night and used some for apple sauce but other than that, we still have loads of apples left. That’s when I decided to experiment.
I remember the 1980’s and even early 1990’s when dehydrators were the craze. A few mums of my friends had these but unfortunately, my own mum didn’t buy one. Often my friends would often bring fruity treats to school and it was wonderful when they decided to let me taste these. It made eating fruit a whole new experience! Fast forwarding to today, I own many gadgets but not a dehydrator. That meant I had to improvise. I used my oven to dry out apple slices. By slicing the apple into 1.5mm thickness, the slices were light and crispy… plus they didn’t take as long to dry out in the oven, only 30 minutes.
I made these apple cinnamon chips with Caitlyn. She had a lot of fun sprinkling the sugar mixture over the apple slices. Once the trays went into the oven, she patiently sat in front of the oven keeping a watchful eye over them while she ate her lunch. Once the dried slices came out of the oven, Caitlyn couldn’t wait to get stuck into these apple cinnamon chips. So they definitely passed the kid test. And the big kid (aka. Daniel my husband) also loved them… then ordered me to make more!
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Apple Cinnamon Chips
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup icing sugar
- 1.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 2 apples, large
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 110 degrees celsius.
- In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon.
- Remove the apple cores while leaving the apples whole.
- Using a serrated knife or mandolin slicer, thinly slice the apples from top to bottom. I sliced the apples into 1.5mm thickness using a mandolin slicer.
- Arrange the slices in a single layer on baking paper lined baking trays and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
- Bake the apple slices for 30 minutes, turning after 15 minutes in the oven.
- Remove and transfer to racks to cool. Store in an airtight container.
Notes
- The key is to get an even thickness to your apple slices which means even drying out in the oven. That's where a mandolin comes in handy. I'm not comfortable to try and slice my apples that thin by hand... but you might be!
- If you use a mandolin to slice the apples, two large apples will fill two baking trays.
- If your apples end up thicker than 1.5mm, extend the time they are in the oven. Judge whether they are ready by taking one slice out. If the slice crisps up when it cools, then it's ready to come out of the oven. Just be prepared that your thicker slices "may" end up in the oven for up to 1.5-2 hours!
- I used an icing sugar duster which I found gave a more even sprinkle of the cinnamon & icing sugar mixture. Alternatively put the mixture into a sieve to sprinkle.