Up until I was about 14 years old I was living in out in the country side in this beautiful old house with a huge backyard. Around the corner was the river, there were farmers everywhere, at the end of the road was the church and if you went in the other direction, you got to the only Pizzeria and ice cream parlor of the village and a shop that sold local fruit and vegetables. I would go there a lot when I was little, partly because my mom send me but mostly because if I had some change, I could get a scoop of ice cream on the way home.
The shop sold pretty much everything that was in season. In the summertime I loved going because of the aforementioned ice cream but I especially liked going there in the winter time because there would not only be fruits and veggies but also chocolate covered sweets. Mostly around Christmas we could get little bags full of chocolate covered dried fruit, nuts or ginger. I would carefully transport the sweets home, put them in a box and guard them with my live against my siblings. I think it was then when I developed a serious case of food envy. Sorry guys, I´m working on it though.
I discovered that you can also make those treats at home a couple of weeks ago. The thing is, I kind of went overboard when apple picking and ended up with probably about 50 kg of apples. So I tried every possible way to use apples in basically every dish ever. I made tons of juice, muffins, cake and apple sauce but the basket still didn’t seem to get emptier. So I decided to give this whole dried-fruit-business a try.
Turns out, it´s actually pretty easy. All you need is fruit, an oven and time. As soon as the fruit is dried, you can dip it into all of the chocolate. I prefer dark chocolate but white or milk chocolate works just as well. If you want to experiment a little more, you could try topping the apple rings with some coconut flakes or chopped nuts. Whatever floats your boat. There might not be enough chocolate for the amount of dried apples but that´s no problem, I´ll show you what you can do with the leftovers in next week’s post.
Before we get started with the recipe I might have to give you a warning: these things are absolutely addictive. Seriously, I just could not stop myself. But they are totally healthy right?
Makes about 30:
6-7 apples
2-3 tbsp. cinnamon
2 lemons
400 g dark chocolate
1 tbsp. coconut oil
1) Wash apples and remove the core. Cut into rings (the smaller the rings, the less time is needed for drying the fruit) and sprinkle with lemon juice from each side. Place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle cinnamon on top and let dry in the oven at 70°C for about 2 – 2 ½ hours. You need to leave the oven opened a little bit, it works best to stick a wooden spoon into the door.
2) Once the apple rings are dried and cooled off, chop and melt chocolate. You can add a tbsp. of coconut oil if you want to make the chocolate runnier. That might make the dipping process easier. Dip each ring into the chocolate so it gets covered completely, then wait until the chocolate has dried and enjoy!
