Stuffed Baked Apples

Ingredients:

• 4 apples
• 1/4 cup of cleaned walnuts
• 1/4 cup of raisins
• About 1/3 cup of dried apricots
• Juice of one lemon
• Cinnamon to taste (1/2 to 1 teaspoon)
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• Honey (optional)

How to prepare, step-by-step:

1. Prepare ingredients: if apricots or raisins are very dry, you can soak them in hot water for few minutes and drain water before proceeding:

   

2. Slice dried apricots into smaller pieces, move them to a mixing bowl:

   

3. Add raisins:

   

4. Add chopped walnuts:

   

5. Add sugar:

   

6. Season with cinnamon to taste:

   

7. Slice top part of an apple:

   

8. Then carefully remove apple core to form an “apple bowl”:
   

   

   

   

   
   
9. Sprinkle apple inside with lemon juice and prepare bowls from remaining apples:

   

10. Chop a bit of apple from 2 cores (discard cores, you will also not need the other 2) and add apple pieces to the stuffing:

    

11. Mix everything in the bowl:

    

12. Warm up oven to 355F. Fill all “apple bowls” with prepared stuffing, arrange apple bowls in the oven proof pan:

    

13. Add a bit of lemon juice into every bowl:

    

14. Cover apples with apple tops:

    

15. Pierce each apple in few places with a toothpick, then and add 1/3 of inch of water to the pan (if you use spring form like I did, you may want to secure bottom of the pan with foil) and put apples to the oven for 40min to an hour:

    

16. Serve stuffed baked apples warm as a dessert, add a teaspoon of honey to the apple bowl before serving if you want to add a little twist to the taste: