Craving something sweet? These baked apples are a delightful dessert featuring seasonal fruit. They taste like an apple crisp but look much cuter.
This baked apple recipe is all in the technique, but it’s not complicated. I’ll walk you through it below.
You’ll need a short list of ingredients to make this recipe—apples, oats, coconut or brown sugar, optional pecans or walnuts, and butter. We’ll add a little bit of cinnamon and salt to take the flavor over the top.
Serve these wholesome baked apples with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or creamy yogurt. They’re sweet enough to taste like a treat, but wholesome at the same time. Serve your baked apples as a special dessert, or make them as a fun weekend project!
Watch How to Make Baked Apples
How to Make Baked Apples
This recipe is actually a fully reworked version of one of my oldest desserts: Individual Pear and Apple Crisps. You’ll find the full recipe below, but are some key elements that make this recipe work:
Choose your apples wisely.
Honeycrisp and Gala apples worked best in my recipe tests (I also tried Granny Smith and Fuji). If I had to choose, I’d pick Honeycrisp, as shown in these photos. They are substantial in size, full of flavor and vibrant even after baking.
Prepare the apples carefully.
This baked apple recipe yields beautiful and delicious results, in large part because of how we slice the apples (a trick I found in my trusty America’s Test Kitchen cookbook).
Slicing off the tops of the apples gives us easier access to the insides for scooping and provides greater surface area for steam to escape from the apple flesh, reducing the likelihood that the skin will split open. The tops create a micro-environment that helps the apple bake evenly throughout and prevents the filling from becoming too golden. All that, and the apple tops are cute!
Add water.
Once you’ve nestled the prepared apples into a square baking dish, pour some water into the dish. The water will help steam and soften the apples while they bake, preventing them from drying out.
More Apples Recipes to Enjoy
It’s apple season! Here are a few more apple recipes on Cookie and Kate:
- Apple Crisp
- Apple Steel-Cut Oatmeal
- Gluten-Free Apple Tart
- Healthy Apple Muffins
- How to Make Applesauce
Perfect Baked Apples
- Author:
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 50 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Gluten Free
These delightful baked apples turn out perfectly, every time! This baked apple recipe features tender apples stuffed with a buttery oat filling. It’s easy to make gluten free, dairy free/vegan and nut free—see the recipe notes for details. Recipe yields 4 baked apples.
Scale
Ingredients
- 4 medium Honeycrisp or Gala apples
- ½ cup old-fashioned oats
- ¼ cup lightly packed coconut sugar or brown sugar
- ¼ cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional but recommended)
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Pinch of fine salt
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- ¾ cup water
- Optional serving suggestions: Scoop of vanilla ice cream or plain Greek yogurt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the oats, sugar, pecans, cinnamon and salt. Mix in the melted butter. Stir until the mixture is well combined and moistened throughout. Set aside.
- Slice off the top of the apples below the stem line (about ¾ to 1-inch down the apple), reserving the tops. Then use a small spoon (a grapefruit spoon is ideal, otherwise be extra careful) to scoop out the centers, leaving ½-inch around the edges and along the bottom. Just make sure you don’t core through the bottom of the apple.
- Place the apples upright into a medium-sized baking dish (large enough to accommodate the apples without them touching each other or the sides of the pan). If the apples wobble at all, slice off a small piece on the base to make them more flat and stable.
- Divide the filling between the apples, then pile any remaining filling around the top of the holes before placing the apple tops back on.
- Pour the water into the base of the dish to surround the apples. Bake the apples for 45 to 55 minutes, or until a skewer or small paring knife inserted through the side and down to the base meets only mild resistance. If you prefer softer apples, try baking them for the full 55 minutes.
- Let the apples cool a bit before carefully transferring each to an individual plate. Serve as desired.
Notes
Make it gluten free: Use certified gluten-free oats.
Make it nut free: Skip the nuts.
Make it dairy free/vegan: Substitute vegan butter, such as Miyoko’s Creamery. I haven’t tested this, but it should work well.
