Allergy-friendly Candy Apples

This recipe is linked to Wellness Weekends and Allergy-Friendly Fridays. 

Be sure to visit those pages for more yummy Halloween treats!

Hi everyone! I meant to post this recipe last week. I was traveling, and I thought I'd done well in planning ahead to write this post on the road. I made the apples early, took photos, loaded all of the photos onto my laptop, and edited photos while on the plane. Perfect! Now I just had to add the recipes and upload to the blog...

Guess what I forgot at home???

Yup. The recipes.

Oops!

But now I'm back, and here you go...

Here are recipes for THREE versions of candy apples. No gluten, corn, soy, dairy, or refined sugar. Bonus: they are RAW vegan! Yes, raw vegan treats for Fall : ) Who needs Halloween candy? These taste MUCH better- and they are better for you.

As I was thinking about writing this post, I came across some pre-made candy apples in Publix (our local grocery store).

Here are the ingredients: 

Obviously these are not an option for anyone with a corn allergy, or kids who may be sensitive to artificial flavors or dyes.

There were also caramel apples: 

Ingredients: 

Corn syrup, refined sugar, dairy PLUS sugar, soy, more dairy (can you really call dipotassium phosphate "milk"?), more soy, even MORE soy, something unpronounceable, imitation vanilla- really, there is not any FOOD in here, except for the apples. And it contains three of the eight major allergens.

How about the chocolate turtle apples?

Ingredients:

Yeah. More of the same. 

So, now that you are convinced you probably do not want to feed this commercial, pre-packaged "food-like substance" to your family... here is an easy & healthy alternative.

I started with the biggest, prettiest Fuji apples I could find. You can use any variety of apple you like.

Note: next time I would choose the smallest apples I can find, not the largest. I was dazzled by the beautiful large apples in the store. But as I was making the apples, they were really too big and heavy, and they were much too big to eat. Each of these apples was enough for 2-4 people. Too big. But they were pretty : ) 

A smaller apple would be easier to handle (especially for kids) and it would also give you a better candy-coating-to-apple ratio.

OK, on to the recipes. I experimented with caramel, chocolate, and white chocolate apples. 

I used the "I Am the Best" Caramel Sauce recipe from Cafe Gratitude's I am Grateful (un)cookbook

Raw Vegan Caramel Apples

Ingredients

Apples

Lollipop or popsicle sticks

Caramel

1 cup macadamia nuts

1/2 teaspoon himalayan salt

1/4 cup raw almond milk

1/2 cup raw agave nectar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla powder

1/2-1 teaspoon yacon syrup

Method

Place all ingredients apart from the yacon syrup in high speed blender. Pulse or start on low and gradually increase the speed until you have achieved a smooth texture (you may need to add a little more almond milk).

Now blend in 1/2 teaspoon yacon syrup, slowly. Taste and add a little more yacon syrup if you like. Note: if you add too much yacon syrup, the color will change from golden to green!

Note: I added about 2 Tbsp melted raw cacao butter to this recipe in the hope that it would harden on the apple once it cooled. It did not harden as I'd hoped, and I also thought it changed the taste (it was still good, but it was much better without). I did not try it, but I think adding 1 Tbsp coconut butter to the recipe might have the "hardening" effect I was going for. So you might try that if you are feeling adventuresome. If you try it, I'd love to hear how it works out.

Insert a popsicle or lollipop stick and dip apples in caramel:

Sit on plate or bowl. This is where I'd hoped it would harden, but it never did (it was still yummy though)

Some of the caramel slid off, and I wound up with a thin coating of caramel, something like this:

Roll apple in topping of your choice, if desired. I used a coconut and pecan mixture left over from another recipe:

Next up: Chocolate apples. The chocolate part of this recipe is from Sarma's Living Raw Food (un)cookbook.

Raw Vegan Chocolate Apples

Ingredients
Apples
Lollipop or popsicle sticks

Chocolate coating
1 1/4 cups coconut oil, warmed to liquify
3/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons raw cacao powder
3 1/2 Tablespoons maple syrup
Pinch of sea salt

Blend all chocolate ingredients until smooth and fully emulsified.

Dip apples in chocolate. Roll in topping, if desired. I used chopped almonds. This topping will harden even faster if you put it in the fridge.

Last one: White chocolate apples!

White Chocolate Candy Apples

Ingredients

Apples

Lollipop or popsicle sticks

White Chocolate (recipe from Lisa at Vegan Culinary Crusade)

1/2 cup melted raw cacao butter (place it in a bowl of hot water until it becomes liquid)
1 tsp vanilla bean (extract or powder)
1/4 cup raw agave syrup (if you keep it in the fridge give it some time on the counter to warm up so it won't cause the cacao butter to solidify too quickly).

Method
Stir everything together in a bowl.
Dip apples in white chocolate coating. Let cool to harden. It is OK to put in fridge, but do not put in freezer. The white chocolate coating is ok in the freezer, but frozen apples thaw out to be mush.
Note: I did not try it, but I think adding 1Tbsp coconut oil to this recipe would make a nice smooth coating that hardens. Let me know if you try that and how it turns out!

Enjoy your healthy, allergy-friendly candy apples! 

I'd love to hear which one you choose, and how it turns out.

Key Lime White Chocolate Cake Pops

Here is the second raw vegan cake pop recipe!

Key Lime White Chocolate Raw Vegan Cake Pops

Makes approximately 8 cake pops

Ingredients
1 cup raw macadamia nuts
1/8 tsp himalayan salt
Key lime juice to taste. I don't think I measured, but probably about 1 key lime/1 Tbsp juice.
1/2 vanilla bean, scraped (keep the empty bean for future recipe: vanilla sugar)
3-4 pitted dates- I didn't use these, but will next time. I think the cake pops need the dates to hold together. I used light agave nectar for a sweetener, but if you use dates, you won't need agave.
Lollipop sticks
White chocolate coating

I made macadamia flour in the VitaMix. If you don't have a VitaMix, I think you can probably skip this step and process everything in the food processor.

Add macadamia flour (or whole raw macadamias) and salt to food processor, and pulse to combine (process a little longer if whole macadamias).

Add key lime juice, vanilla bean, and dates to food processor. Process until mixed, and dough-like consistency.

Roll pieces of dough into balls, and place on cookie sheet or tray to go in the freezer. Tip: using a parchment paper (or Silpat) liner will help prevent your cake pops from freezing to the cookie sheet.

Note: My key lime pops were very soft. I think adding dates will prevent that next time. I simply forgot to add dates when I made these! The ones I made froze well, and tasted great (and actually had a great texture once frozen- more like a truffle), but they would not have stayed on a lollipop stick upright, as suggested here. As it was, the sticks wanted to fall over rather than stay upright in the key lime balls. You can see below that the cherry vanilla ones were firmer. That's what you're going for.

Insert lollipop sticks in balls. Freeze.

While cake pops are in the freezer, mix up the white chocolate coating, described here and here.

Spoon white chocolate coating over each cake pop, and re-freeze. They won't take long, you will be able to enjoy them in about 10 minutes. They are even better the next day, after freezing overnight! Yum!

Raw Vegan Cake Pops

Birthday goodies!

OK, this recipe was NOT as easy as I thought it would be. However, now that I've made all the mistakes, I think the next time I try this recipe, it will be much easier.

When I came across these, I thought, "Oh, cake pops! How cute! That will be the perfect (allergy-friendly) birthday treat. How hard can it be? Make some raw balls, put 'em on a stick, dip in raw white chocolate coating, and freeze." Voila!

Ha!

Ha!

Ha!

Not so fast, Ms. Oh-So-Confident. My "easy" recipe took me most of the afternoon. So long, in fact, that we almost didn't get dinner, because I was still fooling with the cake pops! But, dear reader, you get to benefit from my mistakes- or at least have a better idea of what you may be getting yourself into ;)

Actually, it's not that they were that difficult- but perhaps (definitely) I tried to take on too much at once in this project. Heh.

First, let me give credit to this post, which was the inspiration for this project. I got all sorts of great ideas from the 12 entries listed, and used those recipes as a starting point. I made adjustments for personal taste preferences and dietary restrictions. Check out the original post above for ideas and inspiration for your own raw vegan cake pops! Also, the winners of the cake pop challenge and more tips can be found here (which I didn't discover until after I'd made mine, of course!)

I decided to make two flavors of cake pops. In retrospect, perhaps I should have started with one recipe until I got the hang of it, and then made adjustments and tried new flavors. But -obviously- that's not how I do things... heh heh.

I decided to make:
Cherry-vanilla cake pops, using a cashew base, and
Key Lime-white chocolate cake pops , using a macadamia base.

I will post each recipe in its own post to follow.

The preparation is worth noting here. I decided to make a white chocolate coating (again, making things more difficult than they needed to be, ha). But I LOVE white chocolate and have just been waiting for a reason to finally make a raw version. Did I have a recipe? No. But I'd seen one online... somewhere... Did I think it was going to be simple? Naively, yes :) Uh, what was I thinking???

Note: Raw white chocolate requires raw cacao butter, which is not a common ingredient, even in health food stores. I know of one store in this area that carries it, and that is a great little health food store across the river. So, I spent one day going (over the river and through the woods- er, palm trees) to the health food store to get the raw cacao butter (you can also order it online from various raw food vendors).

Next, you will need lollipop sticks. I found mine at Michael's craft store. I tried a couple of other kitchen stores and no luck. You might want to call around first to find the lollipop sticks. They're not expensive or hard to find, you just have to locate a store that has candy making supplies. Of course, if you're actually planning ahead, there is always Amazon.com

And then you have to make sure you have the other ingredients- nuts, vanilla, etc. Plus whatever fresh or dried fruits you might want to put in your cake pops. All of the ingredients can be found online or in your local health food store, but just a heads up that this recipe takes a little bit of planning.

I will post the actual recipes in the next two posts, but in the meantime, just for fun, if you would like to oooh and aaah over some adorably cute real cake pops- here is the gal that started it all: Bakerella