How to Dry Your Own Apples for Oatmeal with a Kick

If you’re ever gotten sick of oatmeal, you are not alone. Despite how boring oatmeal can get, it remains a staple for many adventurers. On a bike tour, it’s an easy morning meal, so it’s worth knowing a few tricks to give your bowl a little kick. One of these is making your own dried apples. These can easily be made at home before you leave on your trip, and as they’re lightweight, you can keep a decent stash on hand to use in your oatmeal or eat on their own. You don’t even need a dehydrator to make these, a regular oven will do just fine.

When you’re cooking your morning oatmeal, add the apples in at the same time as the oats – as opposed to when the oatmeal is done – that way they have some time to soak up the water and rehydrate a little bit. Ground cinnamon, a little honey and a spoonful of almond butter or peanut butter will make that bowl even better.

Oven-dried Apples

Ingredients:

Apples

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 200°F.

Rinse the apples and slice as thinly as possible, slicing the apple horizontally. Don’t worry about the seeds in the middle; as the apples dry out they will shrink a little bit, and you can easily remove the seeds once they’re done.

Spread the apple slices out on a baking sheet, lined with either parchment paper or a silicone baking mat, making sure that they are not overlapping.

Bake in the oven for about an hour and a half to two hours, until the apples are soft and tender, but no longer moist. How long you have to bake them depends on the thickness of the apple slices.

Remove and let cool, then store in an airtight container.

Anna Brones is a writer, producer and artist. She is the author of several books including Hello, Bicycle and Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break. Find more of her work at annabrones.com or on Instagram @annabrones.