Week One: Apple Desserts
Yes, I'm doing another round of Christmas recipes this year! After starting a new way of eating, and having lost over 50lb so far this year, I wondered if there was a way to continue with this annual project. Then I realized, there was nothing keeping me from doing it! I'll just make sure the recipes are, or are modified to stay within my new way of eating. So this year's overall theme is: Healthier for me.
I started off this week with two desserts. Yes, I still eat dessert! In fact, I eat dessert every night! It's just less than it used to be, and usually involves fruit as all or part of it. I won't be shying away from sweet treats this holiday season. The holidays are only for a short time, after all, and I have a long time to walk off any indulgences!
My dad makes apple pie every year at the holidays, and since he is also changing his eating habits, I was concerned that I might not get apple pie this year. So, I tested out a couple options, and am happy to say that both of them were successful!
First up was Crustless Apple Pies that I made after dinner on Friday. They are in fact, very easy, and very quick to make. The recipe is from Delish, which is subscription only, but I had a daily calendar from last year and this was one of the recipes. Because it's not mine, I can't write out the recipe here, but you can use the ingredient list from the link above, and see how I did it, and know how to do it yourself.
I did the recipe based on making a single serving. I added more spices than just the cinnamon. I added ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom, as well as apple pie spice. Just a dash of each. And the cinnamon was a cinnamon-sugar blend, so I left out the actual sugar it called for.
This is a Hasselback apple. Apple halves, cored, that you slice down width-wise, but not all the way through so it creates an accordion effect. After brushing it with melted butter, I did more sugar-cinnamon on the outside, instead of just sugar. When you reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe, one that doesn't affect the texture, such as this one, you want to replace it with more flavor. Something highly spiced will taste better than something with less sugar and no spice.
You bake the apple for about 25 minutes before putting the filling in and baking for 10 minutes more. This is what it looks like after you bake the oats in it. I think it looks pretty cool! I had some extra oats, and rather than throw them away, I put them under the apple to bake. It all turned out pretty good, except that I would try two things differently next time. 1-I would add chopped walnuts for a bit of crunch. And 2-I would cook the oats separately from the apple and then put it in the slits afterwards. I found that the moisture from the apple essentially cooked the oats into oatmeal, instead of what I thought would be more of a crunchy granola.
This calls for cool whip or whipped cream or ice cream, for sure. Something special on top. I used cool whip so I didn't have to deal with the dairy. This definitely tasted better when I let it cool off and come to room temperature to eat. Right out of the oven is too hot to let the flavors really come forward.
This is a really satisfying recipe for this time of year. It would make an easy Christmas dessert, too. If you wanted to be extra fancy, you could crush a gingersnap over this for added texture and a bigger holiday flavor.
My second recipe was
Hand-Held Apple Pies and this was definitely way more time and energy intensive. Make sure you are at your peak for energy for the day when you start on this, cuz once you start, you're committed to finishing it. After making the dough, the portioning, rolling, filling, assembling, and baking took the entire length of time it took me to watch Empire Strikes Back in my Star Wars rewatch.
The dough uses butter and cream cheese. Cream cheese is not something I've actually ever made dough with before, so this was cool to try out. I used a mixer for that first mixing step, and for the first part of mixing in the flour, but you have to use your hands, eventually, to properly mix this dough.
The first of my alterations to this recipe was to use half whole wheat flour, and half King Arthur keto wheat baking flour. I had a bag that I haven't had a chance to try yet, and was very curious about it. I was very happy with the results. They say you use it basically as a 1:1 substitute for regular flour. I was impressed with the texture and flavor of the dough. I was also impressed that this flour didn't have weird, fakey stuff in it, either.
Here's what the dough looks like when it all comes together. It's darker because of the whole wheat flour, and feels grainier.
This is a recipe where measuring on a scale is really handy. Each dough half then gets divided into 12 pieces, so making sure the halves are equal to start with, and then measuring each piece, ensures the same size portion. Portion control is vital to how I eat now.
The second set of changes I made, was to the filling. Instead of white sugar, I used an equal amount of apple butter, and then added 1tsp. of brown sugar. I think when cutting down on the sugar, replacing what you do use with brown sugar gives you much more flavor. And apple butter just increases the apple flavor overall. It also has sugar, but overall less than just adding the 1/4 cup of sugar the recipe calls for.
Here it is, all blended together. I did stick with just the cinnamon and allspice, this time, as I wanted to see what that spice combo was like, without adding more flavors to it.
Here's the chilled dough, cut up into equal-weight pieces.
I found, because of the space I had to work with, that doing some from start to finish was better than doing all of one step for all 24. I also don't really care about putting a lot of effort into making the dough round or equal. They get rolled out into whatever shape they end up in, and that's how the tart ends up shaped! It all tastes the same!
I carefully measured 1 Tbsp. of filling for each one. They probably could have handled at least twice that much.
I'm calling these "rustic" style. None of them look the same. Some of them I forgot to cut slits in the tops to vent as they baked. It's all good...!
I ran out of filling with two pieces of dough left, so instead of making more filling, I just spread them with butter and sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon, a dessert I grew up with at my parents' house. If you make this recipe, I used two large apples, plus one quarter of a large apple. I'd use at least one half of that last apple's leftovers and add a bit more filling ingredients to stretch it further. That way you can use all the dough.
Of course I had to put cool whip in this one too! These were really tasty. I'm going to try a couple leftover, but I froze the rest in hopes of thawing some out at Thanksgiving and again at Christmas.
Autumn and the winter holidays are the best time for apple desserts. If you love apple pie, but want to try something a little more carb-friendly, but still incredibly indulgent, these are for you!! And I jsut thought of a possible additional way to make these, if you wanted. I will have to try it some day to ee if it works. You could put the dough into mini muffin tins and put the filling in them and bake till done. They'd be little pie bites. Not sure if it would work or not, but with a shot!
