Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
“I have all the ingredients for apple crisp but I’m too tired/don’t have enough time to make it. What can I do instead?”
I received this text message from my friend Julia on a chilly Monday night. “Make baked apples.” I responded. I learned to love baked apples from my mom, who makes them often. It’s such a simple, old-fashioned dessert: just cored apples filled with sugar, spices, and butter and baked until tender so you can eat them with a spoon, perhaps drizzled with heavy cream or with some ice cream on the side. It’s like eating the filling of an apple pie.
I tried to find Julia a recipe she could riff off of, but making baked apples is so easy that I ended up just talking her through the steps. Memorize the technique and you can make baked apples any way you like them on chilly nights when you’re craving a fresh-out-of-the-oven apple dessert without having to put in too much effort. Here’s how to do it:
It’s shocking to see how differently each type of apple bakes. Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
1. Choose the Right Apples
My mom and I can never decide which is the best apple variety for making baked apples. Some varieties turn to mush so fast they explode out of their skins, while some stay weirdly firm. Either way they’re edible, but not ideal—a baked apple should stay intact but be soft enough to eat with a spoon. So I decided to make the dish with as many apples as I could find at the grocery store so I could set the record straight for my mama.
After making the dish in the exact same way with eight different varieties (Jonagold, Honeycrisp, Cortland, Granny Smith, Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji, and McIntosh), there were were two clear winners: Gala and Fuji apples, which both got nice and soft inside, but maintained their shape when baked.
You’ll need one apple per person. It doesn’t matter how many you bake at once—just choose a baking dish that’ll hold your desired amount of apples with not too much empty space around them. (Sometimes I just make one single baked apple in a very small baking dish all for myself.)
The sharp edges of a 1/2 tsp. measuring spoon make a great apple scoop. Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
2. Hollow Out Those Apples
But don’t use an apple corer—it will slice all the way through the apple, which is not what we’re after. You want to remove the core and seeds while keeping the bottom of the apple intact so you have a nice little vessel in the middle to fill with sweet things and butter.
Start by using a paring knife to carefully slice around the top core of the apple, making sure not to go all the way through to the bottom. Then pull out what you cut, and use a spoon to scoop out the rest, making sure that all seeds are out. I find that the sharp edges of a 1/2 tsp. measuring spoon are ideal for scooping out the core, but any small sharp spoon or even a melon baller will do.
Filling those apples with sugar, spice, and everything nice...like butter. Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
3. Fill Them With Sweet Things
Place your hollowed-out apples in a baking dish that has sides that are at least 2 inches high and doesn’t leave too much empty room around the apples. Then fill each apple with something sweet, some spices, and some butter.
You want about 1 Tbsp. of sweetener per apple: it can be either a liquid or granulated sweetener, like brown sugar, coconut sugar, maple sugar, maple syrup, or honey. Add a pinch or two of your favorite baking spices to each apple too: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove, cardamom, and/or ginger. And don’t forget a pinch of salt too. A few little cubes of butter in each apple will help make them more saucy and delicious—add the butter along with the sweetener and seasonings. It doesn’t really matter what order everything goes in, since it will all melt together as it bakes.
I’m using water here, but apple cider (or apple cider spiked with whiskey or brandy) works great too. Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
4. Pour Liquid Around Them and Bake
To keep the apple from charring and sticking to the baking dish as it bakes, but also to help soften it as it bakes, you want to pour about 1 inch of liquid around the apples. Water is the easiest choice and will get flavored with the spices and sweeteners and juices from the apples as it bakes. For a sweeter sauce, use fresh apple cider—and go ahead and add a splash of bourbon or brandy to that apple cider if you like. (You could also spike your water and it would be delicious.)
Bake the apples in a 350°F oven until they are very tender, about 40 to 45 minutes. Start checking at half an hour, and if the liquid has evaporated so much that the surface of the baking dish is dry, add more.
I like my baked apples with cold heavy cream. Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Anna Stockwell
5. Serve Them Hot, Maybe With Cream
When you pull the baked apples out of the oven, let them sit for five to ten minutes before serving to avoid burning mouths. Scoop some of the liquid from the baking dish into each bowl along with each apple. Then add a splash of cold heavy cream if you like (I do) or a scoop of ice cream or yogurt—something cold and creamy next to a hot, sweet apple is always a very good thing.
