Dessert

Healthy Oven Baked Apple Fritters

By Jess

5 from 1 ratings

These Healthy Oven Baked Apple Fritters are Paleo because we’ve ditched the wheat flour and traded it for arrowroot and coconut flour. And, we’ve kept them healthy by baking them instead of deep-frying them. The result is a golden brown, crispy outside, doughy-apple center, great for a snack or a side dish!

Fritters

We’ve gone and done it: healthy oven-baked apple fritters you’ve got to try to believe. With such a rich taste you’d swear they’re fried like the original.

My Dad loves all things baked with apples. Apple pie. Apple tart. Apple crumble. Apple cobbler. He’s an aficionado of baked apple dishes. So I just had to come up with a Paleo recipe for baked apple goodness, just for him. And fritters sounded good to me – who doesn’t love a fritter?!

Apple Fritters Ingredients

You might think that fritters are the antithesis of the food you might find on a list of Paleo-approved snacks. Little balls of dough, deep-fried …probably the antithesis of anything you’d find on any healthy diet plan. But not anymore! These are Healthy Oven Baked Apple Fritters and they are perfectly Paleo.

There’s really nothing like baked apple, especially a green Granny Smith apple like we use in this recipe – you can really use any kind of apple, but I’ll tell you why I like green Granny Smiths the best. They have an extra bit of tartness that red apples usually lack, so when you bake them and use them in recipes, you get a more complex flavor – sweet and tart. The tartness keeps the sweetness from becoming cloyingly sweet.

Mixing It Up

And a ball of dough is just about the perfect vehicle for baked apples bits. But we’re keeping this ball of dough Paleo by making a few minor changes. First, we’re using arrowroot and coconut flour instead of wheat flour. Arrowroot is a starchy tuber that has been a mainstay of South American diets for centuries. The arrowroot flour allows the dough to be dense and stick together well in its wet form.

That’s why so many gluten free recipes use arrowroot. The coconut flour adds bulk and keeps the dough from getting too dense. And, of course, to get all that dough to stick together into nice little fritter shapes, we need a liquid. Instead of using milk, which wouldn’t be very Paleo of us, we use just a bit of coconut milk. Make sure it’s not sweetened!

Healthy Oven Baked Apple Fritters

So mix up your bits of green apple and your dough and then drop spoonfuls of the dough onto your baking sheet. Don’t try to make them perfect little balls of dough – that’s the fun part about fritters: they’re funky little imperfect dough balls! And, those imperfections in shape serve a function as well – a more crispy outside!

Dab a little coconut oil onto each of those bad boys and pop in the oven. That’s right – we’re baking these instead of deep-frying them. This keeps the fat content down but still leaves them cooked and doughy on the inside but crisp and tasty on the outside.

close shot

My Dad has finally learned that when I give him something to taste from my kitchen, even if he thinks there’s no way it could be Paleo, it always is. And he rated these Healthy Baked Apple Fritters among some of the best baked apple treats he’s ever had, so I think that’s another win for Paleo and yet another example of why I love Paleo: it’s about finding new ways to enjoy old favorites, while keeping healthy, inside and out.

(Make this next: Lemon Poppy Seed Baked Donuts)


Ingredients

    • ¼ cup coconut flour
    • 1/8 cup arrowroot flour
    • ½ tsp baking powder
    • ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
    • 1 egg
    • 2 tbsp coconut milk
    • ¼ cup honey
    • 1 medium Granny Smith apple, cubed into ¼ inch cubes
    • 1 tbsp liquid coconut oil

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
  2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
  3. In a large bowl mix the coconut flour, arrowroot flour, baking powder and cinnamon.
  4. Add the egg, honey and milk and mix to combine.
  5. Add the apple cubes and mix to combine.
  6. For each fritter, drop about one tablespoon of batter onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing the fritters about 2 inches apart.
  7. Brush each fritters with coconut oil and bake for 15 minutes.
  8. Serve the fritters in their own or, if you like, serve with a drizzle of honey.

Servings

Serving Size

1

Servings/Recipe

4

Print Recipe

  1. I don’t have arrowroot flour, can I sub almond flour? Can I sub stevia for the honey? I am on a low carb diet.

    • It’s not paleo but I think corn starch would be the closest replacement. Arrowroot is a unique ingredient- it’s hard to replace the elastic & crispy qualities it provides baked goods.

    • Tapioca starch or, as Ashley said, corn starch would work. Almond flour has a completely different texture, so I don’t think it would work at all as a replacement.

  2. Nice recipe ! I think 1/4 cup of honey on this amount is quite a lot. I also don’t like using honey for baking as heating above 40 C kills the nutrients in the honey and all what is left is actually a liquid candy. I would rather use coconut palm syrup or yacon syrup.

  3. potato flour has the same consistency as arrowroot…maybe that would work. I am for sure cooking these babies tonight!

  4. Yum! I made these last night. I was out of honey so I used maple syrup and a Fiji apple. Mine didn’t come out looking as crispy but no complaints here! I highly suggest doubling the recipe!! Going to try this with black cherries..

  5. I’m new to “paleo” – how is coconut flour more paleolithic than wheat flour? Obviously bleached white flour isn’t paleo – but it was the paleolithic era that saw the development of wheat flour – but coconut flour is a harder process

  6. My dtr can’t have coconut so what should I sub for the flour? Almond meal maybe? Doesn’t have to be paleo

    • Sorry, I didn’t try out this recipe with any other flour so I can’t say with certainty how much almond meal or any other flour you should use.

  7. Any idea if these travel well, need refrigeration? I would love to make them to have in the car with me on a lengthy drive/move.

  8. I made this last night and I think I would cut the honey next time I made. I don’t know why they came out very soft and chewy, I baked them for 15 mins at 375 degree as instructed. Should they be crunchy? Or, maybe I should increase the length of the baking time? Also, I’ve added a about 1 tsp more of the coconut milk since I love the taste of coconut.

    Thanks for sharing.

    • Thanks for the feedback. Every oven is different. You can increase baking time, but keep in mind that oven baked fritters will never be crunchy as fried fritters.

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