Light(er) Apple Dip

(This recipe is posted as part of Cooking Up a Sale's April series, Spring Clean Your Eating Habits.  If you'd like to read more on this topic, you can click over to the Monthly Themes page to find the rest of the articles in this series.)

I have never been a big fan of apples and peanut butter, but I really enjoy this apple dip...and so do the kids!  It's super tasty and creamy, and can be stirred up in less than a minute.  Greek yogurt is the base of this dip, so it's lighter than other fruit dips I've made before that use cream cheese and/or Cool Whip.  It's so yummy, you might want to just forget the apples and grab a spoon!  But then again, that would kind of defeat the purpose of a healthy snack, wouldn't it?


**For those of you who follow this blog because of the Meijer sale recipes:  you can try out this recipe using a sale ingredient next week :)  Chobani Greek yogurt is included in the Meijer "10 items for $10 get the 11th item free" sale.**

Ingredients:
1  5.3oz or 6oz container of light (0% fat) vanilla-flavored Greek yogurt
2 Tbsp peanut butter
1 Tbsp honey
dash of cinnamon

Directions:
Stir all ingredients together with a spoon.  Serve immediately or if you prefer it very cold, chill 2 hours.  Serve with apple slices.  Makes 3-5 servings, depending on how much dip you use with your apple slices. 

Options and Tips:

• This dip is best eaten within a day or two.  After that, the yogurt base gets watery and starts to separate.
• Make sure to use a spoon instead of an electric mixer.  Using an electric mixer will break down the yogurt, so your dip will be runny instead of nice and thick.
• If you purchase your vanilla-flavored Greek yogurt in large containers instead of individual, small containers, you should use a heaping 1/2 C of yogurt for this recipe.
• You can "healthify" (hmm, spell-check doesn't like that word) this recipe even more by using plain yogurt instead of vanilla, and/or less honey.  Your dip won't be as sweet, but if you don't mind that, you can try it.
• You can adjust the ingredients to your family's tastes by adding more or less peanut butter and/or honey.  
• Grab-n-go apple slices:  Place cored-and-sliced apples in a bowl.  Pour lemon-lime soda pop (7UP, Sprite, or store-brand) over top of the apples.  Make sure all apples are covered...use a smaller bowl filled with something heavy on top to "sink" the apples if necessary.  Let them soak for 5 minutes.  Divide apple slices into snack-sized, ziploc bags.  Remove as much air as possible from each bag before sealing.  I'm still in the midst of this experiment, but on Day 3, I only have 3 brownish apple slices (out of about 30).  I'm thinking those were the ones on the top that didn't soak well enough.  (I have tried this before with lemon juice, and it didn't work as well.  First, the slices browned much faster than when I used pop, and second, I could taste the lemon juice on the apple slices.)  And yes, I found this idea on Pinterest :)

This recipe was on Pinterest.  When I clicked through to the original post, I found that this blog author had also found the recipe on Pinterest.  I have searched Pinterest and the blogosphere, but have not found the source of the original recipe (I've found recipes that are similar, but not exact).  I am not posting this recipe as my own, but I cannot find the original recipe.