One of my favorite side dishes as a child was a baked apple. I particularly appreciated the fact that my mother served a baked apple with the meal, rather than trying to pawn it off as a dessert. In the childhood scheme of things, a baked apple was far too nutritious a food item to count as a dessert. If dessert was to be part of the meal, I reasoned, a tooth-rotting sweet should appear at the end. It was only fair.

While I am no longer so concerned about mealtime politics, I bristle to this day when I see recipes for baked apples in the dessert section of a cookbook. While it is possible to dress up an apple with enough sugar to turn it into candy — and ruin a perfectly good piece of fruit in the process, I still feel that passing off a baked apple as dessert misses the point.

The reason that apples find themselves in the middle of this discussion is because they bake well and have a natural sweetness that doesn’t require a huge dose of extra sugar when they cook. I understand that recipes for apple pies and other desserts traditionally have been heavy-handed on the sugar, but that’s overkill.

When I make an apple pie, for example, I add only enough sugar to the filling to create a bit of syrup. Many recipes call for a cup of sugar, when a quarter to a third of a cup is plenty. The first time you taste a low-sugar pie, you may be thrown off by how prominent the fruit is in the flavors that emerge, but eventually a sweet apple pie will seem strange.

Similarly, baked apples can hold their own with just a dusting of sugar or a bare drizzle of honey.

The following recipe for baked apples, which is adapted from Martha Rose Schulman’s “The Vegetarian Feast,” is easy and straightforward. While she insists this is a dessert, I think it’s less clear-cut. To add substance to the dish and clearly define it as part of the main course, you can stuff the apples with a mixture on 1 cup cooked rice and either raisins or currants. The spices should be blended into this mixture.

Baked Apples

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6 large tart apples, such as Pippins or McIntosh

1/2 cup raisins or currants

1/4 to 1/3 cup honey

ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg and ground allspice to taste

apple juice or cider

One 3-inch cinnamon stick

1/2 cup plain yogurt (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Core the apples from the top, not cutting all the way through the bottom but carving out a cone shape, so that you have a large hole in the top that narrows as you reach the bottom.

Fill each cavity with raisins or currants and drizzle in some honey, 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon per apple, depending on desired sweetness. Sprinkle with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.

Butter a baking dish and place the apples in it, with the open end of the cone up. Pour apple juice or cider into the pan so the pan is half full. Place a stick of cinnamon in the cider. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, basting the apples every 15 minutes with the liquid.

Serve warm or at room temperature, garnished, if you wish, with a dollop of yogurt.

Makes 6 servings.