Homemade Christmas and Holiday Gifts of Food: Skinny Chocolate Covered Apples

Although many of us enjoy making homemade edible gifts for Christmas or Holiday Gifts, they can sometimes be quite time consuming. Plus, these treats can also be high in calories and fat so this is more of a skinny chocolate covered apple if you will.

Also, I love getting my children involved in the kitchen and making gifts therefore, I made sure our covered apples activity would be super simple and quick. I know most people think of caramel covered apples when you mention covered apples but please consider making without caramel for a very good reason….

When creating Caramel or Chocolate covered apples, you can keep it as plain or as fancy as you wish. This particular project included children in the 5 to 7 year age group and their moms. Do you know what you need to consider when you are feeding 5-7 year olds? Loose teeth therefore, we skipped the caramel layer in hopes of avoiding any dramatic teeth stuck to apple situations.

The lack of caramel also means that the chocolate may fall off when cutting the apple and trust me, I was concerned but none of the youngsters said a thing as they simply picked up any chocolate that fell off with a bite.

If you do want to give these as a gift, wrap the stick as I did or wrap in cellophane first and then tie with a bow.

Ingredients:
Green or Red apples
Chocolate Candy Melts (try to find with no hydrogenated oils)
Assorted candies, whole or broken into pieces

1. Clean apples and remove stem
2. Melt chocolate per manufacturer’s instructions
3. Drizzle or pour the melted chocolate over the apples
4. Apply any candies before the chocolate sets or simply allow the chocolate to set

White Chocolate Cherry Blondies

Here is a recipe inspired by a great friend. The chewy cherries are a wonderful addition to a classic recipe. I chose to reconstitute my cherries in covering them in hot brandy, but plain hot water is the most common way. Holiday Hint; Double the batch and save some in your freezer for holiday company. (Be sure to freeze them quickly…they have a way of disappearing!)

White Chocolate Cherry Blondies

• 2 cup sifted flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup chopped sliced almonds
• 2/3 cup unsalted butter
• 2 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 TBSP vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1.5 cups dried cherries, reconstituted in hot liquid for 5 minutes

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350º. In medium bowl, sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt Add chopped nuts, mix well and set aside. In mixer bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, vanilla and almond extract and mix well. Add eggs; mix well.

Next, add the flour mixture, a little at a time, being sure to scrap the bowl and mix until combined. Stir in white chocolate chips and cherries.

Spread batter into a 9x9x2-inch pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or with slightly fudgy-looking crumbs.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. (Optional)