Apple Dumpling, Where Have You Been All My Life?

So I don’t know about you, but I just recently (yesterday) heard about this mythical apple dessert called an “Apple Dumpling”. There were rumors of whole apples wrapped in pastry crust, doused with maple syrup and baked until perfection is achieved. It really didn’t take much (any) more convincing for me to run right out to the grocery store and snatch up some apples. It was perfect timing too, because I had my friend Felicia from pastry school over for dinner. It was our first dinner “date” and I was struggling with finding the right dessert. I mean, she studied right next to me in class, so I couldn’t just serve up some crappy dessert. But at the same time, she knows how labor intensive this stuff can be, so I didn’t want to look desperate and overachievery. So along came the apple dumpling to rock my dessert world…

First step, I made a flaky pie dough.

Then I peeled and cored my apples.

“But how did you core those apples so perfectly?” you ask…”With this newfangled apple corer!” I say. It doesn’t get to come out of the drawer very often (I mean how often does the need to gut an apple arise?), but every time I use it I feel like an explorer digging up core samples in Alaska. Makes me feel very special indeed.

Then I rolled out my dough and cut it into squares, one for each apple.

I placed the apples on the pastry and filled them with butter and sugar.

Then I wrapped them completely in the pastry. At this point I was feeling a bit skeptical. Is it just me or does this just look like an apple wearing a diaper?

But I continued along, loading them into a tray and popping them back in the fridge to firm back up.

When I was ready to bake I soaked them down with maple syrup spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg.

And then baked them until they were nice and golden. And Oh my lord, it was kind of intimidating. I was regretting the size (gigantic!) of my apples, but somehow there wasn’t much left on my plate… Really, you just can’t go wrong with apples baked in flaky pastry and maple syrup.

RECIPE (adapted from Rustic Fruit Deserts):

pastry:

2 cups (10 oz) AP flour

2 TBSP sugar

1/4 tsp salt

7 oz butter, cold and chopped into tablespoons

~ 1/2 cup cold water

maple glaze:

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup grade B maple syrup

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

apples:

6 small apples

2 TBSP unsalted butter, cut into 6 equal pieces

6 tsp sugar

– Preheat oven to 425.

– Make pastry. Directions for that here. Let pastry relax in fridge for an hour while you prep apples and prepare glaze.

– Combine water, maple syrup, cinnamon and nutmeg in a pot. Simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes. Set aside.

– Peel and core apples. If you don’t have a corer, slice apples in half and cut out core.

– Roll out dough to form an 18″ x 12″ rectangle. Cut into six 6″ squares.

– Place an apple on each square and fill each cavity with 1 piece of butter and 1 tsp of sugar. Wrap the pastry around the apple, pinching it together to entirely cover the apples. Place the wrapped apples, gathered dough end down in a pan.

– Pour the glaze over the apples.

– Bake for 20 minutes, then turn oven down to 250 and bake for 40 more minutes, or until the pastry is golden and cooked all the way through.

– Serve warm, with the maple glaze spooned over the top.