One of the easiest ways to prepare apples is to bake them. It’s like an apple pie without all the work. You can dress them in something sweet for a dessert, or with autumnal spices like cardamom and cinnamon for a great pairing with pork. These pine syrup baked apples use a less than common ingredient I picked up on a trip to the Carpathian mountains…Pine Syrup.
In fact, this entire recipe only calls for three ingredients. Apples (of course), pine syrup, and cinnamon sugar. If you can’t find pine syrup in your neck of the woods you can use maple syrup instead.
What Is Pine Syrup?
Pine syrup is a tree syrup similar to maple syrup, except it comes from, you’ve guessed it, pine trees. I like to think of it as the European counterpart to maple syrup, and can be used as a substitute in recipes.
How To Make Pine Syrup Baked Apples
As mentioned above there are only three ingredients to make this baked apples recipe. When I’m entertaining guests I like to do an entire apple per person, so these instructions are for four servings. You’ll need four apples, and three tablespoons each of Pine Syrup and Cinnamon Sugar.
To make the glaze just combine the pine syrup and cinnamon sugar in a bowl. You’ll also need to remove the top of your apples. You don’t need to core them completely, but I suggest digging down about 1/3 of the way into the apple.
Roll the apple around in the syrup mixture coating the fruit generously. Then place the apple in the center of a piece of foil and wrap it up. Make sure to leave a little chimney in the foil to prevent the apples from turning into complete mush.
Bake in an oven preheated to 175 Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes. Remove the apple from the foil and peel off the skin. This part is optional, it really depends on the breed of apples you are using. Mine don’t have the best tasting skin, so I choose to peel it off. Luckily the skin should just slide right off.
Pine Syrup Baked Apples
Equipment
- Baking Sheet
- Foil
Ingredients
- 4 Apples Stem removed
- 3 tbsp Pine Syrup
- 3 tbsp Cinnamon Sugar
Instructions
- In a bowl mix together the pine syrup (or maple syrup if you prefer) with the cinnamon sugar
- Coat the apples on all sides really well then wrap in foil. Make sure to leave a chimney.
- Place in an oven preheated to 175 Celsius or 350 Fahrenheit and bake for 30 minutes.
- Remove the apples and peel off the skin (if you want). Serve with some vanilla ice cream or whatever else you like.
