- Did you know there are more than 7,500 varieties of apples?

Your nearest supermarket might not stock quite that many, but it's still very important to be selective when buying the best apples for baking.

Choose wisely, and your apple dessert will be moist and flavorful.

The best apples for baking are crisp, firm, sweet and tart, and can stand up to the heat of the oven or stove without turning mushy.

The first two apples I wanna talk about are these two.

And we have here a SugarBee apple.

It was made from a Honeycrisp apple, but also bees pollinated it.

So it has a honey flavor, it's got a little bit of a molasses flavor.

It's juicy, it's crunchy, it is the perfect snacking apple.

And then here, this beautiful apple is called an Aura apple.

It too has a Honeycrisp apple inside of it, but it has this delicious, citrusy taste, and a bit of a star anise spice.

It really is yummy.

So another apple that I found is called the Smitten apple, and it has this wonderful kind of floral taste to it.

It's a little bit on the softer side.

So this particular apple would be really good in apple sauce, pressed as a juice or a cider, but it is delicious.

And we have here a Pink Lady.

It has a sweet, tart flavor, it's crisp.

What's great is, it holds up when you bake it.

And then, of course, we can't have a discussion of apples without Granny Smiths.

Granny Smiths are the tartest out of all of these apples here, and are really great for baking as well, because they're firm, they hold up.

What I would really suggest though, is when you use Granny Smith's for pies or cakes or baking or whatever it is that you're making, that you add a few other varieties of apples along with it, so you give it this complexity of taste.

You have the tartness of the Granny Smith, along with the sweetness and the other characteristics of some of these other apples.

Now, I know for some of you guys who are Gala enthusiasts, Red Delicious, it's not like we left you out at all, but I will say that those apples are great for snacking.

They're great in a lunchbox, we love them, but they're not necessarily the best for baking.

Enjoy.