Baked apples with caramel sauce

In the cooler months, fruit crumbles are a staple at our house. We’ll devour hot apple crumble with lashings of thickened cream at all times of the day – for breakfast, afternoon tea and dessert. Our little cottage is over seventy years old and she’s hard to keep warm when the temperature drops outside. We feel the cold air seeping through the seams in the jarrah floorboards under our feet. Having the oven on is as much about taking the chill out of the air as it is about baking delicious treats. When the oven is on and the house fills with the smell of cinnamon, apple and sugar it warms us inside and out.

Over the long we visited the kid’s grandparents in the south-west, where between national parks most of the landscape has been carved into fruit farms. As a visitor driving though it’s easy to romanticise the country life. It feels so wholesome and quaint. It’s a slower pace where honour systems are still in use. Farmers leave their produce by the farm gate with hand painted signs like ‘Corn 80 cents ea’, trusting that passers by will take what they need and leave the right amount of money in the plastic bucket.

In summer, the region is heaving with plums and cherries, peaches and raspberries. This time of year it’s apples and chestnuts. We took the kids to Fontanini’s Fruit and Nut farm and we gathered up a huge haul of Kanzi apples fresh off the trees. Back home I felt inspired to make a variation on our regular apple crumble and try whole baked apples stuffed with cinnamon and oats.

I baked the apples in my family bowl (Winterwares ceramics are oven-safe!) and served them in our oval bowl. I’m so delighted with how well they turned out, utterly delicious and so easy.

It’s one of those recipes you can adapt and change to what you have in the pantry, add ground almonds or finely chopped walnuts, or use some ready made granola in place of the oats mixture. It’s also delicious served with vanilla ice-cream or thickened cream.

Baked apples

Whole baked apples stuffed with cinnamon oats, delicious served hot out of the oven with lashings of caramel sauce and thick yoghurt.

Servings: 5
Prep Time: 15 mins | Cook Time: 30 mins | Total Time: 45 mins 

 

Ingredients

• 5 apples
• 1 ½ cups oats
• 2 tablespoons coconut sugar
• 50 g butter
• 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• ½ cup dried cranberries
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180º or 160º if you’re using fan forced.
2. In a mixing bowl, add the oats, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar.
3. Using your hand, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until it’s combined.
4. Stir through the dried cranberries.
5. Cut the top of the apple off (making an apple top lid about 2cm thick).
6. Using a spoon, scoop out the inside of the apple, to make a little bowl for the oats mixture to fill.
7. Spoon the oats mixture into each one of the hollowed apples and replace the lids on top.
8. Arrange the apples in your baking dish (I baked mine directly in the family bowl). Drizzle with a little maple syrup and bake in the oven for 30 minutes until they’re golden.
9. Serve immediately with caramel sauce and yoghurt.