Several weeks ago, our family was enjoying a Sunday afternoon with friends at a lake. One of the snacks we brought with us was apples from our orchard along with our homemade pecan butter. While this tasted great, we all noticed that the peanut butter was hard to spread on the apples. That week I started experimenting with a recipe that I hoped would be delicious, and easy to dip, with ingredients that I had on hand from our farm. Our family really liked all of my experiments, but this was their favorite, and the dip stayed on the apples with little effort.

This sweet pecan butter dip is quick and easy to make if you have a food processor. I haven’t tried any other way, but I wonder if a blender might work too? By using good quality ingredients this snack is very nutritious and filling, unlike most modern day, processed snacks. The healthy fats from the cream, nuts, and cream cheese help our kids to stay satisfied longer than just eating an apple, and this also helps to avoid those quick blood sugar spikes. The homemade vanilla, real salt, and honey or maple syrup add a nice, natural flavor. My younger kids love to help me prepare this.

Vegetable oils (A.K.A seed oils) are pro-oxidative, pro-inflammatory, toxic, and nutrient-deficient. And they are virtually everywhere–used for cooking meals in restaurants, in our processed foods, condiments, and more. These oils create mitochondrial dysfunction that inevitably leads to different health conditions, including obesity, coronary heart disease, cancers, type 2 diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s, age-related macular degeneration, autoimmune conditions, and more. This was taken from the Weston Price Foundation.

Since we use our native, raw pecans, we toast these for better flavor and texture. I simply measure out two cups of pecans from my freezer, add them to a pan on the stove, cook them on low to medium heat, (depending on the burner size) and cook them until they are fragrant. This usually only takes about 5 minutes. Then I add the nuts to a food processor after they cool a bit and process until it turns into pecan butter. I simply add all the rest of the ingredients and continue processing until it’s thick. The picture of the recipe is a little thinner since my homemade cream cheese wasn’t quite strained, but this consistency is great too! I do want to make sure that I don’t go too long and turn the cream into butter. This recipe turns out well too, if I only do half of a recipe.

Since we have been blessed with an abundance of apples from our orchard this year, we have been enjoying this sweet pecan butter dip along with our strawberry fruit dip recipe that we shared in the past.

What do you like to do with fall apples? We love to hear from you!!