LILL's LIST

Autumn is my favorite season. This could be because apples are my favorite fruit and fall is apple harvest time. Right at the moment, I’m sitting here tapping my foot and wishing that the Macs and Paula Reds and other early apples would hurry up and make way for my all-time favorite apple: Wolf River.

Now, unless it’s right off the tree, you probably wouldn’t want to just eat a Wolf River. They’re tart and they don’t keep well. But if it’s a baked apple you want – as it so often is with me – the Wolf River is your fruit. It’s large – some are downright huge. It holds up to baking and its taste actually improves with oven cooking.

The following recipe will also work with other “baking apples” if you can’t find a Wolf River in your neck of the orchard. My second choice for baking is Honeycrisp, Jonathan or Braeburn. Although many cookbooks recommend Granny Smith and Golden Delicious for baking, I don’t. I find that baking kills the flavor of the Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples come out mushy and almost sour, or at least that’s what my tastebuds say.

Simple Baked Apple Recipe

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Wash 4 organic apples. Core and make a slice across the bottom to help them stand up, if you want. Fill the place where the core was with a quarter of the following mixture:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

a pinch of salt

Drizzle apples with 1-2 Tbs of ONE of the following: maple syrup, honey or molasses

Then pour 1/2 cup of ONE of the following over apples: apple juice or cider, cranberry juice or any other liquid you like that goes well with apples and doesn’t catch fire when exposed to oven heat.

Baking time varies with the apple variety, so check them after 45 minutes and keep checking until a fork inserted into them goes in easily. Let them rest for ten to fifteen minutes after they’re done which will give you time to go out and get the vanilla ice cream in the big freezer in the mudroom, if you live in Maine.

If you prefer to nuke your apples, you can use the same ingredients, but just microwave in a suitable container at high for about 5 or 6 minutes and then check with a fork. This can get messy, so cover them with waxed paper.

If you like, you can add nuts and any spice you like to the apples before you bake them. However, then they wouldn’t be Simple Baked Apples, now would they? So, I don’t.