Baked Apples

Beware of old women bearing fruit. Er, apples. You know what I mean. In any case, it’s that time of year and aside from fresh cider, cider donuts and pies – you can do a lot with the original bad round babies. My personal favorite show off trick is to core an apple (but not all the way to the base, pack the sucker full of brown sugar with a healthy dose of cinnamon (who spells that right?? Anyone?? I can barely say it). Please pause for tangent.

Supposedly, it’s darn good for you. Cinnamon. It’s supposed to act as an antifungal (yum!) and antibacterial, has the properties of anti-parasitic (whoa there, pay a lot for your tapeworm? Steer clear!) and anti-inflammatory. Whew. Is that all? I thought it just made oatmeal cookies nicer. It may also lower your cholesterol, help diabetics, prevent memory loss and paint the garage. Okay, I made up the garage part. But you see the point. And everyone knows apples are good for you.

So. What’s to hide from? Tangent over. By the way, I’m not a doctor if you want to know the facts on the silly spice – go look it up. Anyway, this is the simplest thing to do with an apple other than eat it raw and it will totally wow’s people with no clue. My sister used to do it for us as kids. It’s awesome for a fall surprise. It smells like a LOT of work.

Core each apple _ of the way down (leave yourself some room and don’t puncture! If you want, cheat a little and go wide. It just means more melty love inside. All you’re really doing is creating a little vertical cubby and removing the not-so-tasty core part. Keep the bottom. It’ll hold in the love.

Spray the inside of a muffin tin with non-stick material. Something edible and meant for cooking is a good idea. Put the apple in the muffin hole (repeat this several times with a bass backbeat and clean, wholesome mind – the words, silly). Fill the empty apple space brown sugar, pack it in real good. You can mix your cinnamon in with the sugar or dust over the top. You make the call.

And bake in a pre-heated oven for about half an hour. I usually shoot for 325 since I can’t remember if it’s really 350 or what. IT’S NOT THAT IMPORTANT. You can eyeball it to see when they look (and smell – my god the smell!) done. They’ll shrivel up a tad, the sugar will overboil and a nice brown color will caramelize on top… mmm caramel. Hey, you could toss one of those on top too. I bet that would rock. Not bad with ice cream either. Melty lovely ice cream with caramel and baked apple (drool alert!)

Anyway. That’s the simplest thing next to just biting you can do with an apple to impress people. If that’s your kind of thing. If you want big time praise and have no shame whatsoever, wrap the apple in phyllo dough (spray that butter stuff between layers and twist at the top like a wee sack of kittens headed for the river) - after it’s done (apples take a while to bake, phyllo not so much) and put it back in for a few minutes to brown… people are suckers for this stuff.