Sunday is my cooking/baking day and yesterday I decided I needed Thanksgiving Part II.
My parents cooked a wonderful Thanksgiving feast and I enjoyed plenty of turkey, green beans, stuffing, potatoes, and pie.
I was on pie duty and made a traditional pumpkin pie and decided to get outside of the pie shell a bit by making an oatmeal cookie crust. I used this recipe from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook but I skipped the (optional) sour cream and I used lemon juice from a bottle. I skipped the nuts and instead of all the spices listed, used Penzey’s Apple Pie Spice. I buy a bag of this every year – it makes the pie. Fancy cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, etc.
Before going in the oven
I coated the apples in the spice and everything baked up really well. I used honey crisp apples which don’t break down during baking so each bite of pie had huge chunks of apple. My favorite apple orchard had their end-of-season special with all apples 20% off. I bought honey crisp “seconds” for baking (and of course a bunch of “firsts” for eating–did you know that if you put apples in a freezer bag and store in the refrigerator, they will keep for months? Just make sure the air is out of the bag.)
This was so tasty that I was sneaking apples off the pie from the moment this came out of the oven to the time I was cutting this for dessert.
I used a really deep pie dish so the crust didn’t come all the way up the sides. This turned into more of an indulgent apple crisp than a pie but it got very positive reviews. I would certainly make it again but would make a number of tweaks to make a healthier crust and would probably double the recipe to have more crust and topping.
Hot and Fresh!
I didn’t bring any pie leftovers home but I did load up on delicious turkey. I looked at all the baking apples I have on hand and decided to try a healthy apple crisp. I started to follow this recipe but I couldn’t open my bottle of maple syrup – the sugar has it sealed shut.
Keeping the peel on keeps the vitamins and fiber on the apple.
Plus, since I just don’t really like sweet foods, I didn’t want anything too sugary. I was more interested in the intense fruit and spice flavors and blackstrap molasses provides a bold flavor. I also wanted to avoid the oil – applesauce was a great replacement.
Apples and Arteries Healthy Apple Crisp
Ingredients
10 apples, chopped (peeling is optional)
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
4-5 teaspoons apple pie spice (or combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves)
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup oat bran
1/4 cup hemp hearts (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tablespoons blackstrap molasses
3 Tablespoons applesauce
Process
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Chop the apples and put in a small bowl. Mix with lemon juice and spice.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, oats, oat bran, vanilla, molasses and applesauce.
4. Put the apple mixture into a pie shell or baking dish. Put the crumble mixture (#2 above) over the apples.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes.
This is delicious! This, along with a couple of pieces of turkey, may have been yesterday’s lunch!
Did you bake pies? What’s your favorite pie flavor? Are you more of a baker or a cook?
I think people either are or are not a baker – there’s really no in-between. A friend of mine called me last week telling me she never knew that pumpkin pie wasn’t just a can of pumpkin plopped into a pie shell and baked!!
