I feel like I’m swimming in apples we picked so many from our trees this year. We’ve experimented with some delicious apple cider, and of course made some applesauce, but I wanted to add even more variety. These dried cinnamon apple chips are ridiculously simple, yet bursting with flavor!

The many benefits of cinnamon

Everyone knows that cinnamon goes with apples like peanut butter and jelly, like stinky perfume and great aunt Edna. What you may not know however, is how absolutely good for you this fragrant spice is. Cinnamon helps control blood glucose levels and helps manage weight. There have been many studies, including this one, that have shown it to be incredibly helpful for diabetics. These researchers found that cinnamon and ginger both:

 “Significantly reduced body weight and body fat mass; normalized serum levels of liver enzymes; improved lipid profile; decreased blood glucose and leptin and increased insulin serum levels… also increased activity of kidney antioxidant enzymes.” (source)

Not only is cinnamon a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, but it can help the body kick cancer and even fight infections. Double brownie points for being delicious. (source)

Dried apple chips

One of my favorite ways to use these cinnamon apple rings is chopped up in my oatmeal for cold mornings. They’re also great as a snack just by themselves. Since they’re dried, all of the flavor gets concentrated down into each tiny bite, so they’re bursting with fresh apple flavor.

You can also throw these into a cake, quick bread or muffin recipe for a quick and easy apple flavor. Add them to granola or yogurt for a delicious snack. You can turn them into an apple pie or cobbler, or even make some of these yummy looking caramel apple energy balls.

I cannot recommend enough getting one of these handy dandy machines. It makes processing apples so much smoother and more efficient. I’m all for hard work, but this time saver will help you get your apples done faster, like 20x faster! It also cuts the guess work out of trying to get even slices. Seriously, that takes forever to do by hand!

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So I just received my first Conscious Box in the mail last week and I have to say, I absolutely loved it! One product that really stood out was the vampire killer flavored “Brad’s Raw Kale Chips”. I decided that I needed to make my own version of these, and to keep it raw I made some cheesy garlic dehydrated kale chips.

Cheesy garlic dehydrated kale chips

We had some kale that needed to be used and my grandma lent me her dehydrator forever ago and I’d yet to use it so… last night I experimented.

The Brad’s recipe used chickpea miso, which I didn’t have, so I replaced it with nutritional yeast. I think the yeast gives these dehydrated kale chips an even cheesier flavor!   My husband thought they tasted even better than the original chips and I loved the price. The Brad’s brand chips cost $7.49 per ounce. My homemade ones cost much less than that, but price will vary depending on where you get your ingredients.

Sourcing ingredients

I bought the cashews and sunflower seeds in bulk from Whole Foods.  I’ve included the brands I use and recommend in the recipe if you can’t find the ingredients you need locally. I buy a lot of my natural pantry items online though since it’s usually much cheaper than my local store. The cost for making these dehydrated kale chips will vary, but it will still be significantly cheaper than buying the prepackaged ones.

What’s your favorite healthy, crunchy snack to munch on? Let us know in the comments and be sure to share this post with a friend!

The post Cheesy Garlic Dehydrated Kale Chips -raw, vegan and paleo appeared first on The Herbal Spoon.