Talk about easy! If you’re ever in a recipe crisis or a party crunch, throw this together in 15 minutes and watch the apples with cinnamon crunch topping disappear before your eyes! Raw apples, sliced thinly and topped with walnutty goodness, give a refreshing twist to otherwise boring party foods or questionable fried bundles of appetizers. Having a mandolin slicer will make this come together in a snap (or you can just slice apples as thinly as possible with a sharp kitchen knife). Zip up the walnut topping in your food processor and you’re ready!
Ingredients
- 2 cups raw walnuts
- Juice from 1 large lemon
- ½ tsp cardamom (use nutmeg or allspice if you don’t have cardamom)
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- ¼ cup agave nectar
- 2 Tbsp yacon syrup (maple syrup can be substituted for yacon or the total of agave + yacon, or you can add 2 Tbsp of agave in place of the yacon)
- 2 large crisp apples (gala, pink lady, etc., but not red delicious or other softer apples)
Preparation
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Take out a cookie cooling rack. Squeeze the lemon juice into a small cereal bowl, removing any seeds.
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Rinse your apples using a vegetable scrubber to help get any dirt off. Dry them.
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Using your mandolin slicer over a cutting board, slice the apple from the side of the apple (not crosswise—you do not want rings) until you get to the core but not to the seeds! Flip the apple over to the other side and repeat. (The apple will still have some left on the other sides but slices cut from here will be too thin, and not have enough surface area to put the walnut spread on, so either make smaller apple wafers or just eat those parts separately.
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Dip the slices in lemon juice on both sides, briefly. Gently shake off excess and place on cookie cooling rack so excess lemon juice can drip off.
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Now place the walnuts in the food processor and grind down to almost a flour, blending for about 25 seconds.
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Pour into a bowl and add in cinnamon, cardamom, agave, and yacon (or maple syrup) until well stirred.
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Spread onto apple slices and place on your party platter. Serve!
