Vegan Apple Fritters {Austrian Apfelspalten} (2024)

Topped with sugar and cinnamon, vegan apple fritters are a heavenly tasty way to start the day. Or, like the Austrians, enjoy them at any time of the day, as main course or pudding. Oh, Austria…

What shall we have for breakfast today? The usual question soon after we wake up in our cozy campervan when our bellies start to rumble. Today the answer was ‘apple fritters’!

This Austrian dish combines pancake with the sweetness of softly cooked apple.

Apple fritters, or Apfelspalten (German for apple slices) as they are called in Austria, are so easy to make, we can even make them with our eyes only halfway open and our minds hardly awake. We don’t like making big efforts to get our most important meal of the day. Apple fritters are a simple and awesome alternative to our usual porridge.

Apple fritters are battered slices of apple fried in a pan. All you need for the vegan batter is flour and soy milk. A cup of each, to create a smooth, runny but thick batter. Cut the apples horizontally from top to bottom into slices just less than a centimetre thick, removing the seeds and stalk. You can cut a hole in the middle to remove the core bits if you don’t like them. We just like to minimise food waste as much as possible.

Now comes the fun part. Dip the apple slices into the batter to give them a thick coat, and quickly transfer them to a hot pan with a little bit of oil. Fry them hot enough to make them go crispy brown, but not too hot - ideally, you want the apple to have just enough time in the pan to go soft and sweetly done.

If your pan is a bit bigger than ours and you can cook more than one fritter at a time, it will only take about 15 minutes to cook two apples worth of Apfelspalten. Depending on the size of your apples of course 😉

The apple fritters are best to eat straight out of the pan, while they are still hot. Whoever is lucky enough not to be the cook can start enjoying the apple fritters while the next batch is frying in the pan. But it is easy enough to turn off the hob while you eat and fry up some more later.

Topped with some sugar (icing sugar, traditionally) and cinnamon, our vegan apple fritters are a heavenly tasty way to start the day. Or…

As so often with Austrian sweet dishes, Apfelspalten are eaten at any time of the day (or night), as main course or pudding. Oh Austria, I do love you.

📖 Recipe

We hope you enjoyed our super easy vegan apple fritters! We have also tried pear fritters, which also worked so well that it deserves recognition of its own. But why not try other fruit as well? Pineapple, peach or mango fritters anyone?

Sophie and Paul

p.s. If you like this Austrian sweet dish, then you absolutely must try our Vegan Kaiserschmarrn recipe