Have you ever eaten a Bacon Bleu Apple Salad before? If you have, then you know how yummy it is! If you haven’t, let me tell you a little bit about it.

I recently discovered my love for blue cheese dressing at a fancy restaurant I went to. It was one of those restaurants that mentions their “signature dressings” when you are about to order. (You know you are at a fancy restaurant when they start talking about their “signature dressings”… well… that and when you get the check at the end of the meal, but I digress…) Something about the idea of their blue cheese dressing got me curious, so I decided to be adventurous and give it a try. It was yummy… and different… and something about it made me want to eat it again for about a week afterward. It was weird. Coincidentally, a few days ago, I was thumbing through an old cookbook that I had forgotten about, and in it was a 3-ingredient blue cheese dressing recipe!

The 3 ingredients were blue cheese, mayonnaise, and plain yogurt. I thought, “Oh, nice! I can do that!” 🙂

I took this simple idea and ran with it. By the way, do you want to know a simple way to build a simple salad? I’ll tell you what I do sometimes…

A simple way to make a simple salad.

When I am wanting to make a great salad that I know will include a soft cheese, like blue cheese or feta cheese…  I start with salad greens and then add some meat (in this recipe, it’s bacon) and some fruit (in this recipe, it’s an apple) and some nuts (in this recipe, it’s pecans) and then top it with a little dressing. Did that sound too simple? I made a little visual. It’s super basic, but you get the idea…

Another example of a salad that I built using this concept is our 6-ingredient Strawberry Tossed Salad. YUM! (Apparently I like bacon with pecans)

Smart Points depend on how you pack it.

It can be a little tricky to measure out a salad. Depending on how much you pack down your salad, you could get 5 or 6 servings out of this recipe. For that reason, I am giving you the smart points for both. If you measure out 6 (1-1/2 cups loosely packed) servings, each serving will be 4 WW FreeStyle Smart Points. If you tightly pack 5 (1-1/2 cups) servings, each serving will be 5 WW FreeStyle Smart Points.

Peeled and Chopped, or Spiralized Apples… you choose.

I used my Pampered Chef Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer to get my apples peeled, cored, and chopped, but I debated making spiralized apples. I thought the spiralized apples would have been prettier, but I ended up going with my Pampered Chef thingy pictured below…

Of course, the Pampered Chef picture is prettier than mine, so I thought I would show you what theirs looks like…

I used to sell Pampered Chef, and I love their stuff. If you want one of these handy tools, you can get it here.

After the apples are peeled, cored, and sliced, I cut them into fun little chunks…

Just to give you an idea of how pretty spiralized apples can be in a salad, I wanted to show you Danielle’s Spiralized Apple Cranberry Salad from her blog, The Creative Bite. Check out how pretty this is:

Danielle’s recipe is similar to mine in some ways, so if you like my salad, you may want to check out her salad as well. But here’s the deal…  You can only check out her site if you promise to come back to mine, okay? Okay! 🙂 You can get to her recipe here.

Okay, on to today’s Bacon Bleu Apple Salad recipe…

Here is what you need:

1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
1/2 cup non-fat plain Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons light mayonnaise (if eating gluten-free, here is a list of mayonnaise brands that are GF)
1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
12 cups salad greens (I used a Spring mix)
1-2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 slices cooked bacon, chopped
1/3 cup chopped pecans

Here is what you do:

In a medium bowl, prepare the blue cheese dressing by mixing the blue cheese, Greek yogurt, light mayonnaise, maple syrup, and cider vinegar.

In a separate large bowl, toss together the blue cheese dressing, salad greens, apple pieces, bacon, and pecans until all of the lettuce is well coated and ingredients are evenly distributed.

Serve immediately. Store leftovers in the refrigerator and eat within 24 hours.

Makes 6 servings.
One serving is 1-1/2 cups loosely packed salad.
One serving is 4 Green, 3 Blue, and 3 Purple points.

Print Recipe

Bacon Bleu Apple Salad

4 Green, 3 Blue, and 3 Purple points per serving.

Makes: 6 servings

Calories: 135

Author: Alisha Hughes

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
• 1/2 cup non-fat plain Greek yogurt
• 2 tablespoons light mayonnaise
• 1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 12 cups salad greens (I used a Spring mix)
• 1-2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 2 slices cooked bacon, chopped
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans

Instructions

• In a medium bowl, prepare the blue cheese dressing by mixing the blue cheese, Greek yogurt, light mayonnaise, maple syrup, and cider vinegar.
• In a separate large bowl, toss together the blue cheese dressing, salad greens, apples pieces, bacon, and pecans until all of the lettuce is well coated and ingredients are evenly distributed.
• Serve immediately. Store leftovers in the refrigerator and eat within 24 hours.