Apple Burritos Recipe

Our blogging friends Joy and Phil asked us to post our recipe for those delicious apple burritos we wrote about last time. They've been our Thanksgiving breakfast tradition for 30 years after I saw the recipe in a Sunset Magazine. That year I volunteered to make the burritos, and have repeated the process every year since. These days, I make the mix, Suzy wraps and bakes the final product.

Because it's evolved over the years, I'll present what we actually do rather than the original recipe. If you try these burritos, please let us know how you like them.

Sorry, we've never taken pictures of making these, so you'll need to use your imagination.

Note: quantities and measures are all guesstimates. We follow a general recipe from Sunset Magazine of 30 years ago, but it’s done a little differently each time.

5 large Granny Smith Apples -- don’t peel, just slice into wedges, cut out the core and seeds, then chop the wedges into small bite-size pieces. Dump the chunks into a large glass baking dish that will fit your microwave oven.

Mix into the chunky apples:
- Juice of one lemon.
- Zest of one lemon
- A bunch of raisins. They don’t come in bunches, of course – use as many as you like, at least 1/3 cup.
- Cup of unsweetened apple juice. If you don’t drink apple juice, two jars of Gerber’s apple juice for babies works out fine. Otherwise you’ve got a quart of juice in your fridge.
- Vanilla – about 1 to 1½ teaspoons.
- Liberal sprinkling of cinnamon.
- Less liberal sprinkling of nutmeg.
- 1/3 to ½ cup brown sugar (we use the Splenda blend for health)
- Maybe ½ cup water.

Mix together well, cover baking dish with plastic wrap, turn back one corner a little for steam to escape. Bake in microwave at least 8 minutes on high. When apples are tender but not mushy, they’re ready.

Grab a package of 8-inch tortillas (this year we used Mission Multi-Grain Flour Tortillas - low fat, high fiber). One at a time, slather softened margarine (we use Smart Balance for our health) on one side of the tortilla, turn it over onto a plate, spoon about 1/3 cup of apple mixture along one side of the unbuttered side of the tortilla, roll it up, and place into a 9 x 13 inch baking dish, coated with cooking spray. Squeeze about 8 of these burritos into the baking dish. Dump the rest of the apple mixture and juices over the top of the burritos. Go wash the margarine off your hands.

At this point, because we make these the day before, we cover the dish with foil and put it in the refrigerator overnight.

Next morning, put the covered baking dish into a cold oven (standard or convection), turn oven to 350 degrees, and bake for about an hour or more as needed.

Serve one or two tortillas per person. Spoon a little of the juice from the pan over them, and offer light sour cream and grated sharp cheddar cheese as toppings.

We often share a bottle of California champagne with this breakfast, but didn’t this year.


This Apple Burrito breakfast (can also be a desert served with whipped topping!) is just one of the family traditions we follow as we live ... Our Life on Wheels.