Baked Apples with Almond Cinnamon Crumb and Whipped Ricotta
Apple halves hollowed out and baked cut side down until they slump, filled with a toasted almond and cinnamon crumb, and served with ricotta whipped loose with skyr.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
I built this for the stretch of the year when apples are cheap and heavy and everything else is expensive, which in my kitchen runs from October to about February. It takes twenty minutes of work and thirty five in the oven, most of which you can spend doing something else, and it makes eight halves, two per person. It reheats well enough that I often bake a full tray on Sunday. It is the sort of breakfast that smells like the house is looking after you, which on a dark morning counts for a good deal.
Two decisions make this better than the baked apples most people remember. The first is cutting them in half and laying them cut side down, which puts the flesh in direct contact with the hot dish so it caramelizes rather than merely steaming inside its own skin. The second is toasting the almond crumb in a separate pan rather than piling it into the hollows before baking. Crumb baked inside the fruit turns damp and pasty. Toasted on its own with a little oil, maple, and cinnamon, it goes dark and sandy and stays that way even sitting on hot apple.
The eating is about three temperatures at once. The apple is hot and soft and almost jammy at the edges where the juice reduced. The crumb is warm and crunchy and tastes strongly of toasted almond. The whipped ricotta is cold and thick and only faintly sweet, and it turns loose and glossy right where it meets the fruit. The lemon in the ricotta is what stops the whole plate from going flat and sugary, and it is the ingredient people cannot identify but notice immediately if you leave it out.
Ingredients
- 4 large firm apples (Honeycrisp, Braeburn, or Gala), halved through the stem and cored
- 3/4 cup part-skim ricotta
- 2 cups plain nonfat skyr
- 1/2 cup raw almonds, roughly chopped
- 1/3 cup almond flour
- 2 tbsp maple syrup, divided
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, divided
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 2 tsp avocado oil
- Pinch of fine sea salt
Instructions
- Heat the oven and prepare the apples: Set the oven to 375°F. Halve the apples through the stem and scoop out the core and seeds with a spoon or a melon baller, leaving a hollow about an inch across. Leave the skin on, since it holds the halves together as they soften.
- Bake them face down: Rub the cut faces with half the maple syrup and half the cinnamon and lay them cut side down in a baking dish just large enough to hold them. Add two tablespoons of water to the dish and bake thirty to thirty five minutes, until a knife slides through the thickest part with no resistance and the juices in the dish have gone syrupy and brown at the edges.
- Toast the crumb: While the apples bake, warm the avocado oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped almonds, almond flour, the rest of the cinnamon, and the salt, and cook five to seven minutes, stirring almost constantly, until the mixture smells strongly of toasted nuts and has gone several shades darker. Take it off the heat, stir in the rest of the maple syrup, and spread it on a plate to cool and crisp.
- Whip the ricotta: Beat the ricotta, skyr, and lemon juice together with a whisk or hand mixer for a full minute, until the grain disappears and it turns pale, thick, and glossy. Keep it in the refrigerator until the moment you serve, since the contrast with the hot fruit is the point.
- Turn the apples and fill them: Take the dish out and turn each half over with a spatula, working carefully because they are soft. Spoon any syrup from the bottom of the dish back over the cut faces, then heap the toasted crumb into each hollow, pressing it lightly so it stays put.
- Serve while the contrast is still there: Put two halves on each plate and add a generous spoonful of the cold whipped ricotta alongside, not on top, so it stays thick. Spoon over any remaining syrup from the dish and eat straight away, while the apples are still hot enough to loosen the ricotta where they touch.
Variations
- Walnut and orange: Swap the almonds for chopped walnuts and add a strip of orange zest to the baking dish, which gives the syrup a bitter edge.
- Ginger and black pepper: Add a teaspoon of ground ginger and a few grinds of black pepper to the crumb for a warmer, spicier plate.
- Cranberries in the hollow: Drop a spoonful of fresh cranberries into each hollow before baking so they burst and go sharp against the sweet apple.
- Tahini drizzle: Thin a tablespoon of tahini with a little water and lemon and drizzle it over the finished apples for something nuttier and more savory.
- Sesame crumb: Add two tablespoons of sesame seeds to the skillet with the almonds for a finer, more fragrant crumb.
Storage & Leftovers
The baked apples keep four days sealed in the refrigerator and are good cold, straight out of the container, with a spoonful of the ricotta. Store the crumb separately in a jar at room temperature, where it stays crisp for a week, and keep the whipped ricotta covered in its own container for up to five days.
Reheat the apples in a 350°F oven for ten minutes, covered, or in the microwave for a minute. Either way, add the crumb afterward rather than before, since anything toasted goes soft the moment it is reheated inside fruit that is giving off steam.
Baked apple halves freeze for three months laid flat in a sealed bag. They come out softer than they went in, closer to a compote than a whole half, which is no bad thing spooned over the whipped ricotta. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and warm gently before serving.
Notes & Tips
- Cut side down, always: Face down means the flesh touches hot metal and caramelizes. Face up means it steams, and steamed apple tastes like apple sauce in a shell.
- Toast the crumb in a pan, not the oven: You can see and smell it changing on the stovetop, and almond flour goes from golden to burnt in about thirty seconds when you cannot.
- Add the maple off the heat: Maple syrup added to a hot skillet burns and turns bitter. Stirred in after, it coats the crumb and sets as it cools.
- A splash of water in the dish: Two tablespoons keeps the first ten minutes from scorching while the apples are still releasing their own juice.
- Keep the ricotta cold: The pleasure here is the temperature difference. Whipped ricotta left on the counter goes slack and the plate loses half its interest.
- Turn them with two spatulas: Baked apple halves are fragile. One under and one steadying the top gets them over without tearing.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The apples, the almond crumb, and the whipped dairy each solve a different problem here. The fruit brings the sweetness and the bulk, the almonds bring fat and crunch that slow the whole plate down, and the ricotta and skyr underneath carry the protein and most of the calcium.
- Skyr is strained for hours before it reaches the tub, which is why it whips up so thick and why a spoonful of it carries as much protein and calcium as it does. It is also what keeps this sweet breakfast from eating like a dessert.
- Apples baked in their skins keep the pectin that sits just under the peel, a soft soluble fiber that is gentle on the stomach, and long slow heat turns their starch sweet without anything being added to them.
- Almonds toasted until they darken taste far more of themselves than raw ones do, and they bring vitamin E, magnesium, and a real amount of calcium to a plate that is mostly fruit and dairy.
- Cinnamon is doing more than flavoring here. It carries the warm note that makes baked apple smell like baked apple, and gram for gram it is one of the more calcium-dense things in any spice drawer.
- As you eat, notice where the cold ricotta turns glossy against the hot fruit and how the toasted almond keeps its crunch, and let the smell of the dish coming out of the oven be part of the meal rather than a prelude to it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which apples hold up best?
Firm, dense varieties. Honeycrisp, Braeburn, Gala, and Pink Lady all keep their shape while going tender. McIntosh and Cortland collapse into sauce within twenty minutes, which is fine if that is what you want but will not give you a half you can lift with a spatula.
Can I bake them the night before?
Yes, and this is how I usually do it. Bake the apples and toast the crumb, cool both, and store them separately. In the morning warm the apples for ten minutes while you whip the ricotta, and the whole thing lands on the table in about fifteen.
Can I use pears?
Pears work, though they cook faster. Use firm Bosc or Anjou halves and start checking at twenty minutes, since a ripe pear will be soft through in less time than that. The lemon in the ricotta matters more with pear, which is sweeter and less acidic than apple.
What if I only have whole almonds and no almond flour?
Pulse an extra quarter cup of almonds in a food processor until some of it is fine and sandy and some is still in pieces. That mixture of textures is exactly what the crumb wants, and it is how the recipe started before I began keeping almond flour in the house.