Improv Recipe: Baked Apples

I thought in order to embrace the warm cozy feeling in the house this morning I would share a few photos of the current events. Harrison is snuggled up with our collie mix, Basil, I have just finished putting a button back on Jeremy's coat, and we have baked apples to enjoy for breakfast.

While chatting online with my mother earlier I had this strange lightning-strike urge to make baked apples. What's strange is that I've never baked apples before, and even more strange is that I've never even eaten a baked apple before! I quickly googled a few recipes and after scanning them a bit I decided this is ridiculous, how hard can a baked apple be?

I quickly scanned my cupboards for whatever seemed appropriate and within fifteen minutes, Jeremy and I were sitting down to steaming hot, crispy baked apples! Success? Definitely.



A Very Vague Recipe for Baked Apples

Ingredients:

• 1 Apple
• a bit of cold, hard butter (tablespoonish?) cut into small bits
  
• dollop of preserves (I used apricot - could substitute maple or apple butter!)
  
• handful of cereal (I used granola, but I'd expect anything would be good!)
• sprinkling of flour
• a squeeze of lemon
  
• cinnamon to taste
  
• maple syrup to taste
• (a teensy bit of brown sugar if you like things sweet)

Halve your apple and dig out the core out of both halves with a spoon to create a hole for the filling (you can adjust the size of this hole to your liking!) Then use lemon juice to roughly coat any exposed area of apple. This adds a great tartness and helps it crisp and brown a bit later.

Combine the cereal/grain, flour and cinnamon. Toss with bits of hard butter. I think I added a teensy bit of brown sugar here too, but depending on your maple syrup you really don't need it.

Place a decent sized dollop of preserves in the hole. If the stem from the core made an actual hole through the apple, this dollop should help seal the hole to keep the melting butter from escaping.

Fill the rest of the holes with the cereal mixture, heaping it well over the top of the apple halves, and place apples in a microwave and oven safe dish. Dress with maple syrup to taste.

Add a half inch of water in the bottom of the dish to help steam the apples while heating. Heat in microwave on high for 4-6 minutes, until butter is melted and cereal mixture looks moist (no crumbly flour on top).

Remove from microwave and place in toaster oven. Toast on high, and check. Depending on your taste, they may need to be toasted for slightly longer. You can do the toasting in an oven as well (400ºF, 10 minutes or so), but it's not as energy efficient.

Serve and enjoy!
Makes 2 servings.

If you're serving this as a dessert, you could add a dollop of vanilla icecream, or unsweetened whipped cream.