Place sunflower seeds in food processor. Add about ⅛ teaspoon salt per cup of sunflower seeds (about ¼ teaspoon for this batch). You can make the seed butter without salt but it will taste a bit flat.

Process the sunflower seeds until you can see some very fine meal or butter accumulating along the bottom and sides of the food processor bowl. This takes about 5 minutes. Usually by that point most of the rest of the mixture is past the “meal” stage but not quite to butter. Because I plan to use it for baking, I don’t need to continue until it’s all butter.

Refrigerate any unused portion and use within two weeks.

Combine the sunflower butter with the tahini, about half the cinnamon and the sea salt and mix well.

Combine the raisins, pumpkin seeds and cranberries with the rest of the cinnamon.

This works best if you have apples that sit level in the pan (I do look for ones that do at the market).

Slice off the very top of the apple as level as you can. Use a knife to carve out a 1-inch deep circle in the center of each apple, leaving about a half-inch-thick wall. Remove that section of the core.

Use a spoon to hollow out the rest of each apple until you have just removed the tough parts around the seeds but have not cut through the bottom of the apple.

Spoon in about 1 to 1 1 /2 tablespoons of the sunflower-tahini mixture, filling the cavity of each apple about half way. Fill the rest of the space with the mixed fruit-pumpkin seed-cinnamon mixture.

Drizzle each apple with ghee to taste, about a half tablespoonful each.

At this point you can cover the apples with waxed paper and place in the refrigerator to bake later. It’s great if your family or guests can be there when the apples come out of the oven. The smell of cinnamon is heavenly, the apples make great sizzling sounds in the pan and the dried fruits puff up impressively. If you do decide to refrigerate and bake later, be sure to allow a little extra time for the apples to warm up a bit from being refrigerated. Or, add a few minutes of baking.

If you refrigerated the apples, remove the waxed paper. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes or until apples are tender when poked with a fork.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes or so before serving. Top with non dairy yogurt or kefir, if desired. For you who can eat the extra sugars, top with non dairy or dairy ice cream!