Cooking adventure: baked apples

Unfortunately, John starting his job and me starting my job search has cut back on the amount of Charleston adventures we get to go on during the week. We've spent most of our time the last few weeks at home, working in the yard (blugh) or down at Folly Beach. But don't worry friends, my family is coming into town next week and adventures will abound! I'm sure I'll have plenty of new Charleston places and activities to write about.

This week things got exciting in the kitchen when a brilliant idea came to me while surveying the refrigerator. I had a bunch of apples that were going soft faster than I could eat them and I had a sugar craving. Add those two things together and you get baked apples!

Why have I never made these at home before? They are super easy and don't even require an extra trip to the grocery store. There are recipes galore online, but pretty much this dish is just a mixture of apples, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter.

Here's how I made mine:

I started by slicing up three small apples. You can make full baked apples, but I don't have an apple corer so I didn't want to go that route. I'm also too lazy to peal the apples, but some prefer them pealed.

Then I mixed in about 3/4 cup of brown sugar, 1 Tbs. of cinnamon (more or less to your liking) and couple tablespoons of melted butter. The amounts aren't concrete because it can be changed up to however you like it.

Mix it all together and you get a nice sauce on your apple slices. I read some recipes online add flour to the mix. I didn't, but I realized later that might have helped thicken the sauce.

Then I put them in a baking dish, covered with a glass lid and baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

I let the apples bake while we ate our dinner and went on a short walk around the neighborhood. When we came back, the kitchen smelled heavenly and the apples were soft with a delicious gooey sauce ready to serve. Yum!