So I actually made these quite a while ago, back when, if you remember, I had an insane overabundance of apples to get through. After a couple of weeks, realizing the apples in my fridge were still taking up an inordinately large percentage of some much needed chill factor real estate, I started trying to find other ways of using up apples. I considered gifting an apple to every person I encountered in my daily life, but I realized even that wouldn’t use them all up. Plus, if said people were angry at me for some reason, I might just be providing them with the weaponry with which they could pelt me in the head 😉 . Or I’d be encouraging them to even more dangerously embrace their inner William Tell. Things could just get ugly (In case you’ve ever wondered what the actual tale of William Tell is – because if you’re like me, the only thing you knew was that he was famed for shooting an apple off his sons head – you can check out the legend section of this Wikipedia article. I have no idea why I’d never questioned the reasoning behind a father shooting an apple off of his son’s head before. I just accepted it as a totally reasonable thing to do apparently? In “reality” it was to save both his and his son’s life after he refused to bow down to the hat that the ruler of the region at the time had placed atop a tree and demanded everyone bow to under punishment of death (ego much?). William Tell refused and was then given the option of death or, because he was known for his marksmanship, to shoot an apple from his son’s head. Oh nobility, the things you do for fun. For a good time, don’t get in touch with your local monarch 😉 ).
There was of course the cinnamon apple scones (for which I also made apple butter (used again in these pinwheel cookies)), and obviously there’s always the option of making apple cider. It goes without saying that I also just ate a whole whack of them straight up, but I wanted something more (that wasn’t crumble because I was also in the midst of Christmas baking and didn’t want more large dessert things taking up even more space in the fridge) and also importantly, something easy. After literally 5 seconds of Googling, I discovered how simple it was to make apple chips!
I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I was to discover this. Apple chips are so easy to make and so delicious and versatile that I think I ended up going through like 20 apples in this way (does the phrase “in this way” sound as la-di-da-fancy to everyone else as it does to me? I swear I’m not trying to be a verbiage snob ( 😉 ), it just comes out of me, unbidden. I clearly can’t stop). I also think I’ll buy more apples in the future for this express purpose.
Now most recipes you find online are either plain, or cinnamon/cinnamon-sugar coated. Then I found the odd site that mentioned sprinkling just sea salt on them (which is really delicious by the way, so I highly recommend this one too). That was it though. What up with that? Being the trailblazer I am, I decided that I would try a few different things. Honestly though, you can literally sprinkle anything you want on these for flavour variety.
I didn’t mention some other ones I tried that are also delicious in case you want even more ideas to get you started. Sea salt (as I mentioned) was amazing, cocoa powder and cinnamon, cumin and cayenne pepper, and lime juice and chili powder. My personal favourites were plain, apple pie spiced and sea salt, but they were all good (I loved the kick from the cayenne pepper, so if that floats your boat, I say get on it!).
Finally, although I didn’t do this for this photographed batch, I can’t recommend enough either buying a mandolin or using the slicer blade on a food processor to slice them thinly and evenly (it’s actually a million times faster to make this way, in addition to not ending up with a few that weren’t quite as crispy as ideal and a few that were burnt). You most definitely can do what I did here initially though, which was just to slice it as thinly as I could with a sharp knife. Also, I’m incredibly lazy and had no interest in coring and/or peeling my apples, but if you have the time and inclination to that, have at it (they’ll probably look prettier. I really couldn’t say 😉 ).
Ingredients
- 4-6 apples
Apple Pie Spiced:
- 2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon cloves
Savoury:
- dash of liquid smoke
- 2 teaspoons sage
- 2 teaspoons rosemary
- pinch of sea salt
Peanut Butter:
- 1/3 cup peanut butter powder
Directions
- Preheat oven to 200F and line a couple of baking sheets with silpat or parchment paper.
- Using a mandolin, a sharp knife, or the slicer blade attachment on your food processor (I set the thickness to 2, whatever that means. You don’t want them too thin), slice your apples.
- Lay out your slices on your baking sheet. You don’t want them to overlap, but you can place them very very close together, they shrink a fair bit during baking.
- Sprinkle with topping of choice (or allow them to embrace their inner nudist and just leave them “naked”). If using multiple spices, combine together in a small bowl first.
- Bake for 1 hour, then remove from the oven and flip. Sprinkle the other side with more topping of choice. Return to the oven for an additional hour.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly (they’ll crisp up more as they cool, so don’t worry too much if they’re not “chip like” when you first take them out)
- Store an airtight container.
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