This week’s recipe continues the apple trend and actually makes two desserts with one recipe. While browsing my online newspaper from back home, I came across this recipe on a food blog (The Flying Fork). She calls these little pies “apple pie empanadas,” but they essentially are mini caramel apple pies. I tweaked her recipe a little bit to cater to college dorm cooking by using crescent roll dough instead of pie dough, although pre-made pie dough would work just as well.
The filling for these pies consists of Granny Smith apples, caramel bits, brown sugar, flour and a little lemon juice. These mini pies are just darling and taste heavenly, with the caramel melting among the brown sugar and apple juices. Drizzling caramel sauce over them for a little extra sweetness. Yummy!
I ended up having more apple filling than dough, and I could not let the mixture go to waste, so I decided to make a caramel apple crisp with the leftovers. To do this, I added extra brown sugar, caramel and about 1 ½ cups of rolled oats. Apple crisp is one of my all time favorite deserts, so I was really excited that I had leftover ingredients to make it.
All you need is:
• 3 granny smith apples, diced
• ½ cup flour
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 10 caramels cut in half, or 2 cups of caramel bits
• Pre-made pie dough or crescent roll dough (2 cans)
1. Combine all ingredients except dough in a bowl. Mix.
2. Roll out dough and cut out big circles (use the mouth of a cup or something else round to help). Make your circles big if you only want a few apple pies or smaller for more pies.
3. Place a heaping spoonful of the apple filling in the center of the dough circle and fold the edges up, making sure to seal the edges securely.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.
For the apple crisp:
• 1 ½ cups rolled oats
• ½ cup more brown sugar
1. Add oats and brown sugar to apple pie filling, combine
2. Bake crisp in 350 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, or until bubbly, in an ovenproof casserole dish.