Why pastila
Why pastila beats the snack bar you’re holding.
Pastila is a baked-apple snack with two ingredients: baked apples and egg white. No added sugar, no flour, no gluten. Here is what it is, why it needs nothing else, and how its label stacks up against the usual suspects.
What pastila is
A baked apple, whipped with air and dried into a loaf.
Pastila is a traditional baked-apple confection. Sour apples are baked whole until their sugars caramelise. The purée is whipped with egg white until it holds air, spread in thin sheets and dried for hours at low heat. The sheets are stacked, pressed and dried again.
What comes out is neither a fruit leather nor a cake. It is soft, fibrous and slightly springy, and it tastes of baked apple and very little else. The loaf becomes a bar when we cut it, a meringue when we bake it, a dessert square when we press it thicker. The ingredient list does not change on the way.
Why it needs no added sugar
Three things happen in the oven. None of them involves a sugar bowl.
Most “no added sugar” bars get there with syrups, sweeteners or fruit concentrate. Pastila gets there by physics.
Baking concentrates the fruit
An apple is mostly water. Bake it slowly and the water leaves while the apple’s own fructose stays, so the purée tastes sweeter than the fruit that went in, without a gram of anything added.
Pectin sets it
Apples carry pectin, the fibre that makes jam set. As the whipped purée dries, that pectin holds the structure, so there is no gelatine, no starch and no flour in the recipe.
Egg white lifts it
Whipped egg white traps thousands of tiny air pockets in the purée. That is why pastila is light and springy rather than dense and sticky, and why a 35 g bar feels like more than it weighs.
The whole label
Baked apples. Egg white. Read it again, it does not get longer.
There is nothing to decode on a Semers pack. No “natural flavouring”, no sweeteners with numbers for names, no oil to keep things soft. Just the fruit and the egg white, and an Apple Bar has a twelve-month shelf life.
Honest labels
One bar next to the things it replaces.
Typical labels for the mainstream product in each category. Ours is the Classic App’Lite Apple Bar, as its pack prints it.
Added sugar and ingredient count of a 35 g Apple Bar compared with typical snacks
App’Lite Apple Barours
35 g · ClassicAdded sugarNoneIngredients2Baked apples (99%) and egg white. No flour, gluten free; the sweetness is the apple’s own.
Milk chocolate bar
45 g · typicalAdded sugarYesIngredients8–12Nearly all of its sugar is added. It is usually the first word on the label.
Granola bar
40 g · typicalAdded sugarYesIngredients10 or moreOats need syrup or honey to hold together, and oil to stay soft.
Dried apple
30 g · typicalAdded sugarUsually noneIngredients1–2The closest rival. Often treated with sulphites to keep it pale; check the label.
Chocolate, granola and dried-apple entries are typical of mainstream products in each category. No added sugar is not the same as no sugar: an Apple Bar still contains the apple’s own, naturally occurring sugars, and we would rather you knew. The Berry Mix bar adds four berries to the list. More on reading labels in the journal.
Who it’s for
Anyone who wants something sweet and would rather not think about it.
Five kinds of people, one bar.
Lunchbox parents
A sweet that is, in fact, a baked apple. Sealed, survives a school bag, leaves no crumbs.
Desk snackers
The four o’clock moment, answered with a baked apple instead of whatever the vending machine had left.
Hikers and runners
Weighs 35 g, lies flat in a jersey pocket, does not melt, and has a twelve-month shelf life.
People cutting added sugar
Read the label once and stop reading labels. Two ingredients, both of which you could buy at a market.
Gift-givers
A box of baked-apple snacks is unusual enough to be a story and good enough to be finished. Boxes ship from Riga with a card if you ask.
For the drawer, or for someone else.
Build your boxApple bars
How to eat it
Straight from the pack works. So do these.
With tea
A bar or a dessert square beside strong black tea, with no sugar added to either.
On porridge
Crumble a bar over morning oats or yoghurt instead of honey. It softens into the warm bowl.
In a lunchbox
One bar in the corner of the box. It does not leak, melt or crumble, and it is still good at three.
After a run
Something sweet and light before the proper meal. Chase it with water.
For the plate rather than the pocket: the 50 g App’Lite Dessert and the 500 g Classic Dessert.
Is there really no added sugar?
Yes, across the apple bars, meringues, baked apple desserts and flourless apple cakes. All the sweetness comes from the apples themselves: baking concentrates their natural sugars. So no sugar is added, but the food still contains the sugars that occur naturally in the fruit.
How many calories?
Per 100 g: 370 kcal for the Classic meringue, 360 kcal for the Berry Mix meringue, 276 kcal for the 50 g baked apple dessert and 320 kcal for the flourless apple cake. For everything else, the label on the pack is the one to trust.
Is it gluten free?
The apple bars, meringues, 50 g baked apple desserts and flourless apple cakes are labelled gluten free, and none of them contains flour. Egg white is an ingredient in every product, so please take care if you have an egg allergy.
Is it suitable for vegetarians, vegans, kids?
Vegan: no, because every product contains egg white. For a vegetarian diet, the full ingredient list is on each product page: apples and egg white, with berries or cinnamon in some flavours. Kids: it is essentially baked apple in a snack-sized pack, which makes it an easy lunchbox sweet.
How long does it keep and how should I store it?
It depends on the product, and the date on the pack is the one to trust. Apple Bars keep for 12 months in a cool, dry place at +8 to +21 °C. Apple meringues and the flourless apple cakes keep for 18 months: the meringues at +8 to +21 °C, the flourless apple cakes in a cool, dry place at +8 to +21 °C. The 50 g baked apple dessert keeps for 9 months at +8 to +10 °C, or 4 months at +10 to +25 °C; the 500 g carton keeps for 18 months at +8 to +25 °C.
Try it
Start with a bar. The desserts can wait.
App’Lite Apple Bars leave Riga in 1–2 business days and ship free on orders over €20. Prefer a shelf? We are also at Maxima and on Barbora — see where to buy.