Here's a great dessert recipe -- that you might be able to make for Thanksgiving (assuming you can find the right kind of apples). Otherwise -- make it soon and you'll enjoy it, I betcha.
APPLE DUMPLINGS
Do you have a metal 9” x 9” x 2” baking pan? Why not? 6 apples fit nicely in one; otherwise, adjust recipe to fit the size of the pan you do have. Make sure pan is at least 2 inches high. Try using a bread loaf pan and smallering the recipe.
Peel and core 6 cooking apples (Jonathons stay firm, McIntosh cook up softer, and never use Red Delicious!). Make certain all nerds are out of apple centers because they offend one’s tongue or at least my tongue.
Mix 2 cups Jiffy biscuit mix with 2 teaspoons baking powder, a couple of tablespoons of cooking oil, a couple of scratches of fresh nutmeg (1/8 teaspoon is plenty), and enough milk to make dough – about a half-cup or so, but experiment to make a dough moist enough to hold together but dry enough not to be so sticky that you swear when rolling it out. Using a rolling cloth, roll out pieces big enough to wrap one around each apple. [Note: Consider putting an extra “patch” of crust on the bottom of the apple (covering the hole) to help hold the juice in while baking. You’ll learn to appreciate this tip when serving the dumplings!]
Put a teaspoon or so of cinnamon sugar and a little pat of butter (Parkay!) in the core of each wrapped apple and fit them snugly into the chosen pan. It isn’t necessary to spray Pam or rub lard on the pan – the dumplings won’t stick much.
Pour over the whole affair a syrup made of 1 cup of water, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, a stick of butter (more commonly known as margarine), enough cinnamon (to taste – about a half-teaspoon is a good place to start), and a couple of scratches of fresh nutmeg (again, 1/8 teaspoon – if you use store-bought ground stuff) which has been boiled and stirred for a couple of minutes. Pour carefully so you don’t splash the cinnamon and butter out of the apple cores, and let each of the dumplings get that nice, shiny gloss.
Bake at 400F for 15 minutes, then lower heat to 300F for at lest 15 minutes – but maybe as long as 45 minutes, depending on how done you decide you like the apples. Serve with decadent quantities of 1/2 & 1/2, or maybe large blobs of sweetened fresh whipped cream, (certainly NEVER use Cool Whip!) or maybe even “pour” cream, which is just whipping cream straight out of the container, or even vanilla ice cream, although I think that’s a heck of an insult to two fine foods that deserve to be enjoyed separately.
By the way – the recipe is much simpler than six paragraphs makes it seem. Practice. . .
