Name: Walnut Stuffed Healthy Baked Apples
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 5
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: ½ cup chopped walnuts; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; 1 tablespoon butter; 5 Gala apples; 1 beet; 1 cup water; 2 tablespoons maple syrup or honey

Jump to Recipe·Print Recipe

Looking for a healthy dessert with autumn flavors that you can make easily with few simple ingredients? We’ve got you covered. These Walnut Stuffed Healthy Baked Apples are so easy to make and you need only 6 ingredients (2 are optional) for the recipe. Also, these are sugar-free, gluten-free and low carb. Enjoy them as a dessert or at breakfast the next day!

Healthy baked apples with walnuts and cinnamon served with a simple beet syrup on the side.

If you love the combination of cinnamon and apples, you can check out our Apple Cinnamon Loaf Cake or Zucchini Apple Muffins. They are perfect for the season too. But today we are here to share a healthy and ridiculously easy apple dessert recipe that requires no baking skills at all.

What you need to do is quite straightforward: Core the apples, stuff them with a cinnamon walnut filling, top with butter and bake. Besides these main steps, we add an additional step which enriches this classic baked apple recipe in a wonderful way. We make a simple beet syrup right in the same pan and serve the stuffed baked apples with a drizzle of this syrup. Read on to see how to make that easy beet syrup.

Apples scooped out and ready to be stuffed with walnuts on a dark background.

Ingredients For No sugar Baked Whole Apples

We need 4 main ingredients:

Apples
Walnuts
Cinnamon
Butter

While you can make an amazing dessert with these four simple ingredients, we want things to get even tastier and fancier. So we make a simple beet syrup to serve with the apples.

We need three more ingredients for this:

Beet
Water
Honey or maple syrup

The Easiest Filling For Stuffed Baked Apple Recipe

This is a sugar-free and gluten-free filling and we just need the ingredients below:

Crumbled walnuts
Cinnamon
Apple pieces scooped from the inside of apples
Butter for topping

Notes About The Ingredients

We LOVE walnuts with apples, but you can use whatever nuts you like.
Cinnamon is the only spice in this recipe. You can add more spices like ginger, nutmeg or cardamom if you want.
We chop the apple pieces scooped into smaller pieces and use it in the filling. So please don’t throw them away.
You can substitute coconut oil for butter to make the recipe dairy-free.

How To Scoop Apples

First, cut a thin slice from their bottom so that they are flat and can stand stable. Next, cut their top off and scoop the center of each using a tablespoon. It is easy to do it by twisting the spoon inside. Make sure you remove all the seeds. Then, scoop a bit more to make enough room for the filling. Don’t throw the scooped parts away, we are going to use them in the filling.

Don’t worry about their shape. They really don’t need to look perfect.

How To Bake Apples Stuffed With Walnuts

First, preheat the oven at 400F/200C. Next, place the apples in a baking pan, stuff them with the filling and top each with butter. Then, pour water in the pan and bake for 30 minutes or until the apples are tender. For the beet syrup, please read on.

Simple Beet Syrup

If you want to make the beet syrup, peel a beet, poke a knife into it randomly so that it gives its lovely color. Place it in the pan and then pour water over it. Then bake the apples.

Remove the apples from the pan. Keep the beet there. Add in honey or maple syrup in the pan, give it a stir and heat it in the oven(or over the stove) for 5 minutes or until slightly thick. Remove the beet (you can use it in salads) and transfer the syrup in a bowl. Drizzle it over the apples when serving.

Are Baked Apples Healthy?

Just like other fruits, apples are healthy when baked without sugar. Although they might lose some vitamins or nutritional benefits, they are still good for your health. Plus, you can enjoy baked apples as a dessert that is waaaaay healthier than most of the other desserts.

Stuffed baked apples and beet syrup served on black plates.

The Best Apples For Baking

You can use any apple in season for baking. As we don’t add extra sugar in this recipe, we prefer sweet apples like Gala or Golden Apples. We don’t use Granny Smith for no-sugar baking because of their tart flavor. We do love them raw though. Learn more about the varieties of apples and see which one you can find in your area and which one is best for your taste.

Serving These Healthy Baked Apples

We serve this easy apple dessert with the homemade beet syrup on the side so that we can drizzle as much or less as we like over the apples.

Alternatively, you can serve them with whipped cream, clotted cream or ice cream if you want to spoil yourself even more.

What To Make With The Leftover Filling

We sometimes have a little filling left, which we are happy with. It makes a perfect breakfast bowl topping the next morning. Or we sometimes use it in pancakes too. Don’t you think these are great ideas to use that simple walnut, apple and cinnamon mixture?

Woman with a red jumper serving baked whole apples with walnuts and beet syrup on a dark plate

More Easy Recipes With Apples

As always: If you make this recipe–or any recipes on Give Recipe–let us know what you think by leaving a comment below. And post a pic on Instagram too—tag @give_recipe so we can see!