Weekend Cooking: Baked Apples

Happy weekend all! Man is it going by fast! I just wanted to throw a quick line out there that I have been EXTREMELY busy over the last week (and probably the next two weeks as well) with school and overtime at work so I may not be responding as much around here or on your blogs as I would like, but I am still reading all your comments and filling my reader with articles to go back to later!

Ok, on to the actual cooking!

This weekend I have pulled from an entirely different and unexpected historical source. I have been reading the Dear America diaries recently and found that on the Scholastic companion site for these books some of the recently re-released books have recipes to go along with the stories. Only one of the books I have read so far has recipes, but as they re-release books they have been adding to their site. You can check out all of their historical recipes here.

The book I read was Dear America: The Winter of Red Snow - The Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1777 and the recipe I chose was Baked Apples. According to the Scholastic site, baked apples would only have been served during late summer or autumn, when apples, were readily available, but I couldn't wait that long!

Baked Apples
Serves 4

Ingredients:
4 large apples
¼ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup chopped pecans
¼ cup currants or raisins
1 Tablespoon butter
¾ cup boiling water

Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Wash the apples and remove the cores to 1/2 inch of the bottom of the apples. Use a spoon to dig out any seeds. Make the holes about an inch wide.

2) In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans, and currants/raisins. Place the apples in an 8" by 8" baking pan. Stuff each apple with the sugar mixture. Top each apple with 1/4 tablespoon of butter. Add the boiling water to the baking pan.

3) Bake the apples for 30 to 40 minutes, until tender but not mushy. Remove the apples from the oven and baste the apples several times with the pan juice.

4) Serve warm with vanilla ice cream on the side.

We used currants in our take on this and only made 2 apples.  Our batch didn't have any pan juices at the end, it was just water, so I didn't baste them afterward.  Maybe when we cut down the recipe we did too much as the mixture didn't overflow the apples and create a tasty juice, however the apples were still very good.  The currants and pecans were a nice added touch I have never had in baked apples before.  We went with the currants to try something more traditional and different from what we would normally have.

I would recommend the 40 minutes if you use large apples as at 30 minutes they were only soft for about half of the apples.  I also have always been taught to remove a peel of skin from around the entire apple to prevent them from exploding when they expand, and although this recipe didn't say to do that, their picture on the site looked like they did, so I did anyway.  And of course I forgot to buy ice cream so I was a little disappointed, but the apples were still great themselves.

A great quick and relatively healthy snack option for you and your family.


Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Any post remotely related to cooking can participate.





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