Apple Pie Stuffed Apples

I gave you a healthy applesauce recipe, then a completely over the top cake recipe, so it seemed like this recipe would touch on parts on both the healthy and sweet worlds. It’s apple pie, but minus the majority of crust – so a bit healthier?

Also really cool looking. Seriously – look at those babies. Everybody gets their own individual apple pie. I feel like Oprah right now – you get a pie! And you get a pie! And I get two pies!

That’s not how it went?

That’s how it goes in my kitchen at least.

Roasted Apple Spice Cake

Now that you have your homemade applesauce ready, you can make this cake and eat it too. And I do recommend eating it – it is amazingly delicious. Roasting the apples makes it taste like you have little pockets of apple pie hiding inside your cake. Seriously, who doesn’t want that?

You’re going to have to peel the apples anyway and roasting the apple halves gives you time to figure out if you really want to make cream cheese frosting from scratch or not. I won’t tell if you decide to grab the pre-made stuff if you don’t tell about my habit of using Skippy brand peanut butter in recipes that call for “all natural” peanut butter. Deal?

Easiest Apple Sauce

It’s the beginning of Apple Mania!!! Woo!

All right, I think it may be fair to say I may be the only person excited about this because apparently all the other food bloggers were prepared and started bringing out their fall recipes in mid-September and it’s late October and I’m only getting around to it now. But I have good reason – namely, I’ve been apple picking twice this season (up from zero last year) and currently have a boatload of apples I need to use up!

So you all get some apple recipes and I get to clear space off my kitchen table. We both win!

We’re starting with making apple sauce because not only is it delicious and low-effort, it’s an ingredient in Wednesday’s recipe – so if you make it now, you’ll be prepared for cake in a few days!

Easiest Apple Sauce

From Smitten Kitchen

I added a bit of brown sugar to my recipe because I think it tastes delicious. The recipe didn’t include it originally, so if you aren’t a fan or are trying to reduce your sugar intake feel free to omit!

Ingredients:

4 pounds of apples, peeled and cored

4 strips of lemon peel

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup water

1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

Equipment:

Large pot with lid, blender/immersion blender/food processor

Peel, core, and chop apples into large chunks (eighths will work perfectly) and put them along with all the other ingredients into the pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and cover pot. Cook for approximately 30 minutes or until apples are very soft. Find the lemon peels and remove them, then let cool. Puree using your appliance of choice then enjoy!