A Great Year for Mountain Apples on Kauai

This year (2025) has been a great year for mountain apples on Kauai. I’ve never had so many people give me mountain apples before. This year I’ve also seen the biggest mountain apples that I’ve ever seen. Some years are better than others for certain fruits. Like mango, mountain apple, lychee. This year 2025 is definitely a mountain apple year.

Mountain Apple is not native to Hawaii/Kauai however it grows really well here. It takes years for a tree to produce larger apples. Younger trees will produce smaller apples.

With the raising cost of groceries I wasn’t about to put these mountain apples to waste. We made a few things with these apples. My favorite being mountain apple muffins. I will put my recipe below.

Bob for Mountain Apples Game

I have seen this game played on TV and Ive always wanted to try. It is a bit easier bobbing for mountain apples than it is for regular apples because of its shape and because mountain apples are softer. My son and I had a lot of fun with this. It entertained him for a while plus I got to try out this game without having to share dirty apple water with others.

Mountain Apple Sauce

My 7-month old baby enjoyed this! All I did was slice up the apples and cooked them in a little water. Then when they are cooled you can blend them. Cooking apples always takes out a lot of the flavor so you can add a little sweetener if desired. In general I do not find that mountain apples are that sweet. And they are a little more watery than regular apples.

Mountain Apple Pie

I did not try this one! However I’ve heard of other locals making this dish. My partner tried a slice from a friend and he said he didn’t like it.

Mountain Apple Muffins

I was thinking what would mountain apples match best with. And in my opinion it is a muffin. I could not find a mountain apple muffin recipe per se. However I found a regular apple muffin recipe and this recipe worked great with mountain apples.

Recipe: 

2 1/2 cups of flour (I did 1 cup of all purpose flour and 1 1/2 cups whole wheat).

1/4 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon banking soda

1/4 cup olive oil

2 eggs

3/4 cup buttermilk (milk with a squeeze of lemon).

1/2 cup of apple juice (without added sugar).

1 1/2 cups chopped mountain apple.

For the topping 2 teaspoons sugar with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (I used sucanat instead of sugar but brown sugar would also be great).

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. Then mix all wet ingredients in a bowl. Mix the dry and wet ingredients. Fold in the mountain apples. Scoop batter into a cupcake lined tin pan and sprinkle topping mixture.

Bake at 400 degrees F for about 20 minutes.