Fill your kitchen with the comforting aromas of fall. This healthy recipe is gluten-free, oil-free, sugar-free, and vegan, and it easily adapts to a single serving or a huge batch. Kids love diving into their own individual apple!
Make this recipe during Rosh HaShanah, when we traditionally eat apples, or save it for your sukkah during Sukkot. It's also perfect (and healthy) for an autumn Shabbat brunch.
Preheat oven to 375°F.
To prepare the apples:
- Use an apple corer to remove the cores and seeds from the apples. Then, use a peeler to remove about 1/2-inch of the apple peel, around the top of the apple.
- Squeeze the apples into a square oven-safe baking dish.
To prepare the stuffing:
- In a small bowl, combine the oats, raisins, pecans, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg.
Put about 2 tablespoons of the stuffing in each apple. Sprinkle extra stuffing over the top.
To bake the apples:
- Pour the water and cider vinegar in the pan with the apples, so that the liquid comes up about an inch in the baking dish.
- Cover the pan with foil and bake for about 40 minutes.
- Remove the foil and bake for another 15-20 minutes, until the topping darkens.
- Serve warm.
Chef Katie Simmons' Tips
- Use any sweet, crisp apples for this recipe.
- You can make a double-batch of the "stuffing" mix and store extra in your freezer. You'll be ready for this treat any time!
Chef Katie Simmons is a classically-trained personal chef in Chicago. Her journey to cooking has been a winding path from Kentucky to backpacking in New Zealand through culinary school at Kendall College and working for Whole Foods Market. Her own frustrations of being an overweight fitness professional finally led her to embrace a plant-based, vegan diet.