A warm baked apple for the cold months

There are cool evenings that call for something warm and a little indulgent, and a baked apple answers that beautifully. This is genuinely sweet, so treat it as the treat it is. The sugar runs a little higher per serving here than in most of this collection, worth knowing if you are watching your intake closely alongside everything else.

Apples bring fiber and polyphenols, the colorful plant compounds that feed a healthier gut community, and baking softens them into something gentle on the system. The maple and raisins do the sweetening with whole food sugars rather than refined sugar. Enjoy the portion as it is meant, a treat for a special evening.

Bake these when the house is cooling and let the smell fill the kitchen. When you bring one to the table, take a breath over it first. A few minutes of presence and a little gratitude for the fruit change how even a sweet thing settles in the body.

Ingredients

• 4 medium apples, cored
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons maple sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup, divided

Method

Heat the oven to 400 F and grease a baking dish with the coconut oil.

In a small saucepan, simmer the raisins, coconut milk, maple sugar, cinnamon, and salt for about 10 minutes, stirring often, until the mixture is soft and syrupy. Stir in half the maple syrup.

Stand the cored apples in the baking dish and spoon the raisin mixture into the centers, packing it in. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the apples are fork-tender.

Drizzle the remaining maple syrup over the apples before serving. Serve warm.

Instant Pot variation

Pour 1 cup of water into the pot and set the trivet inside. Fill the cored apples with the simmered raisin mixture, stand them on the trivet, and cook on high pressure for about 4 to 6 minutes, then quick-release. Firmer apples want the longer end of that range; soft varieties need less. Drizzle with the remaining maple syrup before serving. The simmer step for the filling can be done first on the Saute setting in the same pot.

*Adapted from a-clean-plate*

*Lower-sugar note: the sugar here is the apples, not added sweetener. For a lighter serving, use a smaller portion, or blend in a splash of water or coconut milk to stretch the batch so each serving carries less.*