1.5qt Slow Cooker Applesauce

I was given a 1.5qt slow cooker for Christmas. It is tiny and cute, but I have no idea what to make with such things. I spent a while searching for recipes the other day, and I found one for applesauce! I never thought I could be so excited to make applesauce, but yes... applesauce! This is very easy to make and just cooks overnight. You can keep the applesauce in the fridge for up to 2 weeks as well. I may never buy applesauce again.

Applesauce
4 or 5 baking apples
1/4 C water
1/2 to 1 t cinnamon
1/4 to 1/2 C sugar

Wash and peel the apples.I used Cortland apples.

Cut them into cubes or chunks and toss them into a clean 1.5qt slow cooker.

Pour in the water. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Add the sugar. (Cinnamon and sugar amounts are "to taste".)

Turn the slow cooker on low and let cook for 8-10 hours. I stirred it a few times. The applesauce will be chunky. If you prefer thin applesauce, smash down the chunks or use a food processor.

Enjoy!

Apple Cake II

Yes, another apple cake. These old cookbooks have a lot of apple cake recipes, plus I still have a few bags of frozen apple slices in the freezer! Those need to be used up so we can restock the freezer with even more frozen apple slices. I'm also not brave enough to attempt strudel yet. I have a lot of strudel recipes, but they are all intimidating...

This apple cake is good. I can't really give a comparison to the other recipes since I make them so far apart. The best part of this cake is the crumbly goodness on top. The directions to assemble the ingredients were kind of weird at one point, but it turned out nicely. I also like that no mixer is required!

Apple Cake

1 C sugar

1/2 C shortening

1 egg

1 1/2 C flour

1 t baking soda

1/4 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

1/2 C milk

1 t vanilla

4 apples, peeled and diced

1 T butter, melted

1/2 C brown sugar, packed

2 t cinnamon

2 T flour

1/2 C chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a bowl, stir together the sugar and shortening with a fork until well blended and kind of fluffy.

Add the egg and mix until combined.

In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Add the milk and vanilla. Stir until combined. This will be a thick and kind of dry mixture. That is how it is supposed to be, so continue on unfazed.

Place the flour mixture into the bowl with the sugar mixture and combine. Make sure it is decently combined!

Add the diced apples and mix.

In yet another bowl, combine the melted butter, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nuts. Stir until blended.

Pour the batter into a greased 9x9 inch pan. Sprinkle the brown sugar mixture on top.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. If you are using frozen apples, the baking time will increase a bit. Let cool for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

Apple Crisp

Here is something nice and easy to make. The most time consuming part of making this apple crisp is the peeling and slicing of the apples. Fortunately for me, I had some pre-peeled and pre-sliced apples in the freezer! I didn't measure much of this, but I have included the original recipe below to use as a guideline. Desserts like this are something you generally make "to taste".

I will make this recipe again, but I will add less water to it if I use frozen apples. I'm not sure if the amount of water would need to be decreased if you use fresh apples. I didn't have any good ice cream available, but I'm positive this will be excellent with some vanilla ice cream.

Apple Crisp  (Printer friendly PDF version)

4 C peeled & sliced apples

Cinnamon to taste

1/2 C water

3/4 C flour

1/2 C butter, melted

1 C sugar

Spray an 8x8 inch baking dish with cooking spray. Line the bottom of the baking dish with sliced apples. Pour the water over the apples. Sprinkle the cinnamon on top.

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, butter, and sugar to make a crumbly mixture.

Evenly distribute this crumbly mixture on top of the layer of apples.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 40 minutes.

Let cool for a bit before serving.

Enjoy!

Apple Nubby Cake

I'm not sure if you have noticed, but I like apples and baking apples into desserts. I also have a lot of frozen apples that need to be baked, so this works out. Soon it will be strawberry season and that will give me a break from the apple recipes. Anyhow, this is yet another apple cake recipe. I have no idea why it is called "Apple Nubby Cake", but it is an apple cake regardless of what “nubby” refers to.

I had to alter this recipe a bit during my baking venture, but you don't have to. I left out the nutmeg and added a bit more cinnamon. The people I feed my baked goods to don't like nutmeg, but since they like cinnamon it is an easy problem to solve. I also didn't leave skins on the apples since they were peeled before they were frozen several months ago. If you like nuts, you can probably add nuts to this cake without a problem. The resulting cake is soft with a bit of a crunchy crust. It reminds me of a dump cake.

Apple Nubby Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Recipe)

2 T shortening

1 C sugar

1/2 t nutmeg

1/2 t cinnamon

1/2 t salt

1 t baking soda

1/2 t baking powder

1 egg, well beaten

1 t vanilla

1 C flour, sifted once

2 C diced unpeeled apples

All of the mixing can be done in a medium sized mixing bowl with a fork. First, mix together the shortening and sugar until well blended and no chunks of shortening remain.

Add the nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Stir it all together.

In a cup, lightly beat together the egg and vanilla. Pour this into the dry ingredients and blend.

Add the sifted flour. I just put a cup of flour into my sifter and sifted it directly into the bowl. Again, mix it all up.

Now you can add the apples (and nuts, if you wish). Mix. The ingredients will seem dry and, if you are like me, you will worry that the recipe will fail. It will not. The apples release juice as they cook which is absorbed by the dry ingredients.

Smush the combined mess into a greased and floured pan. I used an 8x8 inch pan. Bake this at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 40ish minutes. It is kind of hard to stab it with a toothpick to test the doneness because the apples are always kind of gooey.

After removal from the oven, let the cake cool for 10 minutes. Remove the cake from the pan and cool some more. Serve warm or cold. The recipe claims it can be frozen for a few months after baking.

Enjoy!

Pie: A Tart o' Apple

Sometimes we really crave li’l apple desserts. Foolproof recipes reproduce one of the luscious pies, create an edible tart, and all provide joy. No uneaten leftovers exist – we demolish complete pies. A delicious venture; I ensure enjoyment. The miniature palatable pie created below, I – maybe possibly we – celebrate amazing math constants with. Bake, taste, celebrate Pi Day…

Pie: A Tart o' Apple (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

3 baking apples, peeled and cubed or sliced

1 pie pastry (unbaked)

4 T brown sugar

1 t cinnamon

5 t flour

9 t butter (melted)

Make your pie pastry if needed. I made my own pie pastry because I wasn’t sure how the pre-made pastry would work out. If you don’t know how to make pie pastry, buy premade and reduce the problem to one already solved.

Roll out the pie pastry and cut out large congruent circles. Smush these large circles along the inside of well greased muffin cups. Be sure the diameter of the pastry cutouts is larger than the diameter of the muffin cups! (A bit more than radius plus height, if you feel like measuring.) Sprinkle flour in the pastry lined cups.

In a small mixing bowl, combine the cinnamon and brown sugar. Add this to the cubed apples, which should be in a separate mixing bowl, and stir together very well. Mix in the melted butter. 

Scoop the sugar coated apples into the pie pastry lined muffin cups. You can try to be fancy and add criss-cross pie pastry lines to the top. That would give a greater crust to apple ratio, so only do that if you really enjoy pie crust. Your set of tarts can be either open or closed.

Bake at 360 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool for 15 or so minutes, remove the tarts from the muffin cups, and eat. No forks required, just hands.

Enjoy!

Happy Pi Day!

Note: In the title & introduction, punctuation doesn’t count and dashes are used in place of zero. I only made it through 65 digits.

Apple Krunch

Warm apples go best with crunchiness. If you agree, then this recipe is a good thing for you to make for dessert. It is a bit sweet, but you can adjust the sweetness levels by the type of apples and the amount of brown sugar you use. The assembling is easy and it smells great while baking.

This recipe seems easy enough, but the list of ingredients and directions that I used were not very complete. I did a bit of guessing, but it turned out pretty well! I think I may use a quarter cup less sugar and flour next time, since I didn't use all the "krunch" mixture. This recipe is more of a guideline that is easily adjusted to suit your tastes.

Apple Krunch (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
Apples, the amount depends on the type used
1 C sugar
1 C flour
2 t baking powder
1 egg
1/4 C brown sugar
2 T butter
ground cinnamon to taste

In a bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, and baking powder with a fork.

Add the egg and mix well. This will result in a crumbly and dry mixture. Set this aside.

Peel and slice your apples. Or, if you already did this and froze the apples like I did, remove them from the freezer. Line the bottom of a 8 x 8 inch casserole dish with apples. Make this layer thick. I would guess I used the equivalent of 3 apples.

Sprinkle the brown sugar over the layer of apples.

Cut the butter into small chunks and evenly distribute them over the brown sugar to the best of your ability.

Evenly layer the sugary mixture over everything. (Everything in the dish, not the kitchen...)

Sprinkle the top with cinnamon. Use as much or as little as you want.

Bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees. Let cool 5-10 minutes before cutting and serving.

This is probably great with ice cream or milk, unless you are lactose intolerant. Enjoy!

Apple Cake

The past week or so has been plagued with baking failures. Working with old recipes seems to result in a lot of wrong outcomes due to the difference in ingredients over the years. I'll eventually reattempt those failed recipes and post them in their properly baked glory. For now, I will stick to a few easy recipes to get me back into the habit of baking and creating posts.

First up this year is another apple cake recipe. I like this apple cake better than the previous one I posted. I'm going to eventually remake all of these with fresh apples instead of frozen apples; the frozen kind seem to melt into the dough during the baking. This recipe is very easy, but the baking time will vary so be sure to check it near the end.

Apple Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
1 C sugar
1 1/2 C flour
1/4 t baking soda
1/2 C butter (unsalted)
1/2 C milk
1 egg
1 t vanilla
4 apples, chopped

2 T butter, melted
1/2 C brown sugar
2 t cinnamon
2 t flour
1/2 C nuts (optional)

Cut and chop the apples. I used frozen apples, so I had to guess how much would be equivalent to 4 apples.

Sift together the sugar, flour, and soda.

With a mixer, combine the flour mixture with the butter and milk. Mix until smooth.

Add the egg, vanilla, and apples. Mix until well blended.

Place the batter in a loaf pan.

Combine the melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, flour, and nuts.

Sprinkle this mixture over the batter in the loaf pan. I think it would also be good to layer the batter and crumbly topping.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Since I used frozen apples, it took an extra 10-15 minutes to bake. Toothpick will come out mostly clean when finished.

Let cool almost completely before cutting or the cake will fall apart. It is very moist!

Apple Delight Cake

Apples are delicious. Cake is delicious. It seems rather clear that apples and cake combined would be delicious. I'm not sure how to bake a cake inside of an apple, so for now I'll have to settle with apples baked inside of a cake. The addition of ice cream, or even just a glass of milk, to the slice (or three) that you will eat would be acceptable.

This recipe produces an amazingly delicious cake with apples inside. The resulting cake is moist and cinnamon-y. The top and edges are a bit crusty and the inside is kind of gooey. The combination is perfect. I advise you bake this right away.

Apple Delight Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2 C flour
1 t soda
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
3 eggs
1 3/4 c sugar
1 C vegetable oil
2 C thinly sliced apples
Optional: 1 C chopped nuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9 x 13 inch cake pan.

Sift the flour, soda, salt, and cinnamon together. Set aside.

Place the eggs, sugar, and vegetable oil in a mixing bowl. Beat together on medium power for 2 minutes.

Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and mix until combined.

Stir in the apples (and nuts if you are up to it). Spread the cake batter into the greased cake pan.

Bake the cake for 35 to 40 minutes. The cake is finished baking when a toothpick is stabbed into the cake and comes out clean.

Cool almost completely before cutting and eating. Enjoy!