Fall & Winter Budget Recipes, Volume II: Baked Apples.
Last Sunday around 9 at night I started jonesing for something sweet. There were two Cortland apples on the shelf. I remembered that during graduate school, I went through a phase where I used to eat baked apples several times a week. I would make them at the very end of my day, which was often around 2am or even later. I’d wait the hour they took to bake, as their aroma filled the house. I’d pour a slug of half-and-half over them, which made me feel old-fashioned, like a lady living in a garret, which I kind of was, and eat them with a knife and fork AND a spoon, for sopping up the sugary juice.
So I baked the apples. This dish is super easy, sort of elegant in a shabby way, and provides many of the satisfactions of apple pie with way less expense, butter, and work. It lets you have the excitement of waiting for something to come out of the oven, with almost none of the hassle of getting something into the oven.
And so I present to you…
BAKED APPLES
Servings: 2
Price per serving: $0.62 (with half-and-half); $1.02 (with ice cream)
2 apples (any variety you’d use for pie) ($0.99)
Raisins (I like to use golden raisins) ($0.14)
Molasses or brown sugar ($0.03)
Water
Cinnamon ($0.01)
Half-and-half ($0.06) or vanilla ice cream ($0.87)
Core the apples (Mark Bittman suggests that you use a melon baller, which would be nice if you owned a melon baller. I use a paring knife creatively.) Place the apples in a baking dish. Fill their holes with raisins. Add half an inch of water to the bottom of the dish. Pour a spoonful of molasses into the hole of each apple. Sprinkle cinnamon on top, and some on top of the water. Bake at 375 degrees for about an hour, until the apples smell great and seem to be soft to the touch. If you bake them too long, the fruit will start to disintegrate. Serve hot with half-and-half, heavy cream, or ice cream.
If you hate raisins, you can use jam instead. You could probably use mincemeat. You can throw nuts into the mix. I wonder if you could bake pears or plums. Probably.
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