Maple Apple Snack Mix

 

Fall is here! I have been craving maple flavor. Which kinda sucks when you are trying to eat healthier. I'm looking at you Maple cookies.....

So what is a girl with a sweet tooth to do? Enter Maple Apple Trail Mix. There are quite a few steps here, but luckily lots of shortcuts that you can take too.

First I started by drying my apples in the dehydrator. YES, you can absolutely use the store bought, already dried ones, but if you have followed my blog for a bit, you know that I have to be careful with preservatives. And it is really pretty easy. The dehydrator does all the work. 

Forgive my lack of pictures for this process, my handsome photographer had boxing class this morning.

Start by mixing 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice with 1 cup of water in a bowl. This will keep your apples from oxidizing and turning brown. You can use the fruit fresh stuff from the store as well, but I have never tried it. 

Wash, peel and core 3 apples. I did them one at a time then dunked them in the lemon water, to wait.

Slice your apples into 1/4 slices, then cut into 1/4 cubes. Then toss them back in the lemon water to keep their pretty color. Place your apple cubes onto your dehydrator trays. Make sure you go all high school dance on them, NO touching. You want to make sure that the air can circulate through the trays. I have big gaps on my trays so I use perforated silicone mats on top of the stock trays that came with my dryer.

The apple cubes go in the dehydrator at 135 degrees for 6-8 hours. Keep checking them after 6 hours of drying time.

While the apples were getting dried, I made the maple glazed nuts. I used 2 cups of pecans and 2 cups of walnuts this time. You can use any combination of nuts that you like here. But to me pecans and walnuts scream fall. The first thing you need to do is set out your syrup, salt, cinnamon and maple or granulated sugar, and prepare your cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper.

So in a dry skillet the nuts went to get toasty. Toasting releases their oils and really bumps up the flavor of your nuts. It also kind of livens them up, because unless you have hulled them out yourself, they have probably sat in the store for a little while.

Once the nuts are nice and toasty, in went the maple syrup, salt, and cinnamon. Once you do this you have to constantly stir them, it only takes a minute for them to go from glazed to burnt. Make your husband watch the kids, don't answer the phone, don't check Facebook... You get the idea. ( I didn't even get pictures of this process because I couldn't stir and take pictures) Once the syrup has thickened and stuck to your nut mixture, dump them out onto your prepared cookie sheet, and immediately sprinkle with your maple or granulated sugar. Then separate them with the spatula to cool and set completely.

Once your apples are dried, they should look like this:

Apples and Cherries (I cheated here)

Then everything goes into a big storage bowl. Glazed nuts, dried apples, dried cherries and because why not, 2 cups of Maple Brown Sugar Chex cereal. 

That's it! Now just keep it in an air tight bowl, or bag. You can also make it ahead of time and store it in the freezer. 

You can use any nuts that you like. You can add white chocolate or cinnamon chips. If you really wanted to bump up the maple flavor, you can throw in some maple nut goodies.

Let me know if you give it a try!