Mini Apple Cobbler

   Ahh, the apple season is underway, with Halloween soon to follow! And then Christmas, which is when the baking happens most! Well, unless you are at my house, there is a huge baking project every time we have people come over! This time is was for a cross-country spaghetti feed for my Brother and his team, and Laurie had the cooking to do while I baked. I was in the kitchen four hours after school on Wednesday, without stop. Here are pictures of what I made:

Here we have some Lemon Poppy seed muffins with Cream Cheese frosting, and Caramel Apple cookies with Caramel Apple frosting. Both of these mixes and frostings can be found at your local Walmart (yes, I know, store-mixes. I just didn't have to or the supplies to create everything from scratch).

Apple Pie Cookies

   Fall is here! With the change in weather also means the flooding of apples at my house! And with these apples comes Applesauce-making time! But what about the extra apples that don't get applesauce-ed? Well, if they aren't eaten they get cooked into foods or desserts. Mostly pies, but this time I have a cookie recipe that uses apples!


   This recipe was found through Pinterest, which sent me to Redbook to find this recipe. Now, I don't have any powdered sugar to make the icing, nor do I like icing my cookies, so I left it off. I also left out the cherries and walnuts, but the cookies taste amazing all the same. They are wonderfully light and fluffy, plus the perfect balance of cinnamon and apples. Try this recipe out if you have a chance!

First things first, the apples. While you butter sits on the counter to soften you can be cutting up both the apples called for in the recipe. Now, I don't have a box grater so the smaller apples you see on the left are just chopped into small pieces. On the right they are slightly bigger, and this is just to help incorporate the whole apple flavor into the cookies.

   After you create the dough you have to mix the apples in. The dough will be pretty thick, but that is okay. That is exactly what you want for these cookies. Then you just stir in all the apples until everything is well incorporated.

   The last thing you do before the baking process is to drop dough by the spoonfuls onto your prepared cookie sheet. Either non-stick spray or parchment paper works fine for that. Plop it in the oven for 10-12 minutes, then viola they are done! You can eat them warm or wait until they are cooled off. Either way, they are amazing!

RECIPE:

INGREDIENTS:

2 Apples:Peeled, cored, and quartered

2 1/3 cups Flour

1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Salt

1/8 tsp Ground Cloves

1/8 tsp Ground Nutmeg

1 1/4 cups Brown Sugar, packed

3/4 cups Butter or Margarine, softened

2 Large Eggs

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease baking sheets with non-stick spray, or line with parchment paper. Chop up one apple into small pieces, leave the other  one alone. Set aside.

2.  In a small bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cloves, and nutmeg. Set aside.

3. In a large bowl, blend the brown sugar with the butter. Then, beat in the eggs one at a time, until well blended. Then stir in the flour mixture, the dough will be thick. Stir in both the apples.

4. Drop dough onto prepared baking sheets, about 2-inches apart. Bake 10-12 minutes, or until the edges have started to brown and the top has set. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

   Enjoy! Both warm or not these cookies taste fabulous!! Store in an air-tight container for up to three days(if the family doesn't eat them right away)

Try this recipe? Tell me how it went below in the comments!

Apple Crisp

Alright, peach season is over...time to bring on the apples! Every year my family and I go up to apple hill to get apples to can them! And boy is homemade applesauce yummy! The whole process is fun too!!
   But this isn't what I made this fine summer night! We actually had some store-bought apples that nobody ate, so Laurie cooked them. Then she asked me to pull out our old Betty Crocker Cookbook (picture edition, 1956) to see if there was a crunchy recipe we could put the apples under/over. Well, just my luck, I found this wonderful apple crisp recipe!

And let me tell you, it is absolutely amazing! Very easy too!! Now, Laurie had already cooked the apples with some cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg, but if you would rather not cook them you can just place them in the baking dish. That is what you should do in the original recipe, which I will place down below. But, if you wanted to flavor your apples, just cook them in a pot with some sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg!

Here are the apples, all nicely cooked! But, if you don't have a lot time or would rather un-flavor the apples, just cut them up and put them in the baking dish. Make sure you peel and core the apples, as well as cut them up. Both slices and cubed apples work fine, it is purely based on preference.

Then, you will make the topping! Just mix the brown sugar, flour, oats, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter into a medium sized bowl until crumbly. This is where the crispy top comes from! It is very simple, and almost a fail-proof recipe. I mean, someone out there might find a way to mess it up, and I would congratulate them. Just kidding, I'm not that mean!

Then you will want to crumble the mixture onto the top of your apples. It doesn't have to be perfect! And, seriously, before and after you bake it the topping will look the same!! The only way you can tell that it is done is if the topping is more of a golden brown color, and is crispy and hard-ish. I mean, if it was completely hard it might just be burnt and burnt doesn't taste so good!

But, stick this in the oven and let it cook for a while. And when I mean a while, I mean you can watch your favorite tv show, clean the kitchen, or even make a dinner! It will take a while for this to bake to perfection! And oh my goodness does this make the house smell amazing! This is definitely one of those desserts you wouldn't mind smelling forever!

Then, viola, it is done! This dessert is best served warm, and a little side of ice cream won't hurt either! If it isn't eaten right away, you can put some saran wrap over it and store it on the counter, it doesn't need to be refrigerated  But, if storing, don't do it for more than a couple of days, because then the topping will get soggy and a little gross. EW!

Recipe:

4 Apples; peeled, cored, and sliced

2/3-3/4 c Brown Sugar

1/2 c All Purpose Flour

1/2 c Rolled Oats (Quaker Oats are fine)

3/4 tsp Cinnamon

3/4 tsp Nutmeg

1/3 c Butter, softened

1. Preheat oven to 350˚ and grease an 8" pan (either square or round works).

2. Place the sliced apples in the baking dish, set aside for now.

3. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the rest of the ingredients until it has a nice crumbly texture to it. Crumble over the apples.

4. Place dish in oven and bake 30-35 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown with a crispy texture. Serve warm for best results.

Try this recipe? Tell me how it went down below in the comments!

Easy Caramel Apples

   So, every once in a while Laurie will find a recipe on the internet that she wouldd like me to make. And, knowing that I love to try new things, I do it! laurie tends to see recipes that are trending on the internet, recipes I  see but give no thought to. I mean, Pinterest has a whole page dedicated to  this recipe, yet it is hard to actually find written directions on how to make caramel apple slices! And if you have yet to see this recipe, this is basically what it is, no directions or links at all:

   Yeah, annoying right? Almost as annoying as this keyboard(which lags, then makes my words run together. Which means I have to spend extra time going back and making sure everything looks okay). Anyways, the picture above shows that you hollow out your apples, melt down some caramel sauce, and pour it in your apples. What it doesn't say is: how long to melt the caramel, when to put it in the apples, and the fact that you have to refrigerate them first to set the melted caramel. I mean, how could you get all that from one picture? You can't.
 So, once again I created my own little recipe, one that does make sense! And it is only two steps! Too easy, right? They literally take 10 minutes to take(mostly coring the apples) and 20 minutes to set. And they taste sooooo good! I mean, if my dad is eating them they must be good(he never eats what I bake, so it makes me excited when he does)! And I only used two apples since there are three of us, but it is definitely enough!

First, carve your apples! You can use any type of apple you want, but I just used these green ones since that is what traditional caramel apples are made with! But, any kind will do. You can carve out as much or as little as you would like, it all depends on how you like your apple to caramel ratio.
   You can either eat the apples "innards" or get rid of them. At my house, the chickens get them! They eat a lot of apples in the fall too, when canning season comes along! Heck, even my dogs love apples and apple skins!!

   Next, you are going to want to fill your apples with caramel. I just used this caramel that I had leftover from a catering gig I had at the beginning of summer. I only had 1/2 the jar left, which barely filled my two apples. I would say that a full jar would probably give you 3-4 apples.
   Then you would just refrigerate the apples for 20 minutes. cut them into individual slices, and enjoy!

Recipe:

2 apples, cored but not peeled

8 oz Caramel sauce, any

1. Cut your apples in half and scoop out the middle. This can be done with a spoon.

2. Pour caramel into apple halves. Refrigerate for 20min-1hr or until caramel has set.

3. Slice and enjoy!

Try this recipe? tell me how it went below in the comments!