The Fruit of Our Labor

So if you read or even glanced at my last post, you know that we currently have apples in abundance in our household! So when Jack was invited over to a friend's house after school today, the girls knew just what we should do with our free time...bake!

Since we go apple picking every year, I have tried all sorts of recipes for one of our favorite dishes, baked apples! I have baked them whole with the cores removed & filled with brown sugar & raisins. I have sliced them up & baked them with butter, cinnamon, apple cider & honey. But today I was wanting to try something new, so I Googled "best sliced baked apple recipe" to see what I would find...there are seemingly endless variations of this simple recipe! Some of the recipes use lemon juice and others use maple syrup, some use nuts & raisins, others use oatmeal...but one variation using a sugar/flour/butter base seemed pretty popular. With so many apples on hand, I figured if this recipe didn't turn out, I could keep trying until I found "the one!"

Here is the basic recipe that I saw on several websites. I modified this base & added a few more ingredients to jazz it up a bit. My modifications are denoted with an **

Basic Baked Cinnamon Apple Recipe (I first saw it here)
4 cups sliced apples
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
1 stick butter
1/2 cup water **I used slightly more.
Pinch of salt
Cinnamon
**1/3 to 1/2 cup of brown sugar
**raisins & dried cranberries to taste

-Place apples in 9x13 baking dish. (I greased the dish with the butter wrapper from the stick of butter I used.)
-Mix sugar, flour & butter until crumbly; sprinkle over apples. **I also added about 1/2 cup of brown sugar to this mixture & mixed it in before sprinkling over the apples.
-Sprinkle pinch of salt over the mixture in the baking dish; sprinkle cinnamon over dish to taste. **I think one recipe called for a "dash" of cinnamon & I used way more than that!!
-Pour water over mixture in dish.
-Sprinkle with handfuls of raisins & dried cranberries **My helpers had fun with this part!
-Bake at 350 degrees until done & slightly brown & bubbly. **I think this took 30-45 minutes, but may vary depending on the size & variety of your apple slices.

Here is ours ready for the oven...

It looked so yummy UNbaked, the girls could barely keep their fingers out of it!

And here it is fresh from the oven...

okay, WOW, I have found "the one"!!! 

This recipe turned out to be amazing! We all gobbled it up with dinner & I think everyone asked for seconds. The butter/flour/sugar base cooks up almost like a cobbler, so it is simply delicious. I sliced more apples than I could use, so I will definitely be making another batch tomorrow. It is a cinch to put together & pop in the oven! If you are looking for the BEST Baked Cinnamon Apples Recipe...look no further & give this one a try! Oh, and the best part of having helpers in the kitchen...they LOVE to play in the soap suds wash up the dishes afterwards! ;-o