9 Easy Things To Make With All Of Those Apples You Picked

======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====

Is it even fall if you didn’t go apple picking (and Instagram it)? The problem with apple picking is that you come home with apples – tons of them. There’s no way you can eat them all before they go bad, and it feels wasteful to just dump them. So what the hell are you supposed to do with all of those damn apples?

Since this is exactly what happened to me this weekend, I spent a few fruitful (pun-intended) hours at work earlier this week perusing the internet looking for easy (read – 3 ingredients or less) recipes that I could make to use up the half-bushel currently taking up way too much of my already limited counter space. And given that I figure most of you are likely to be in the same boat at some point during this fall season, I figured I’d share my finds.

First, the ones I actually attempted to make:

Apple Dump Cake from Betty Crocker

Ingredients
4 cups chopped apples
1 box Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ yellow cake mix (you can also use spice cake mix, which is what I did)
¾ cup butter, melted

Directions
Heat oven to 350°F. Spray bottom of 13×9-inch pan with cooking spray.
Place chopped apples in pan. Top with dry cake mix, and pour melted butter over top, making sure to cover top with butter as much as you can.
Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until bubbly. Serve warm. Enjoy!

This was super easy, aside from chopping four whole cups of apples. But it was worth the effort because this was freaking delicious. Even my coworkers loved it the next day when it was room temperature instead of warm. I’m pretty sure these people would eat anything though, so that’s not exactly concrete proof. But still, it was pretty good.

Baked Apple from Spoon University

Ingredients
1 apple
2 tablespoon raisins
Cinnamon

Directions
Core the apple and stuff the hole with raisins.
Pierce the apple skin all over with a fork.
Sprinkle with cinnamon.
Microwave on high for 3 minutes or until the apple is soft and the raisins juicy. Serve warm.

I don’t really like raisins, so I replaced the raisins and the cinnamon with peanut butter and nuked for two minutes instead of three. Warm peanut butter in an apple? Thumbs up.

Apple and Onion Spread from Green Evi

Ingredients
1 cup of shredded apples
1 cup of finely chopped onions
2 tbsp coconut oil
salt, pepper

Directions
Heat up coconut oil in a large pan.
Prepare veggies and add them to the pan too. Season with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat for about an hour or until apples and onions are very soft and falling apart.
Keep it chunky or blend it smooth in a blender, then spread it on everything.

I didn’t have any chopped onions, so I used four tablespoons of minced onion instead. That may be why the consistency wasn’t really like a spread, but it did make a good cracker dip.

Apple Scrolls from Cooking For Busy Mums

Ingredients
1 Cup Fruit Yogurt
1 1/2 – 2 Cups Self Raising Flour
1 Apple, peeled and sliced finely

Directions
In a large bowl, place the flour and yogurt.
Mix with your hands until it forms a ball
Place on baking paper and roll out to approx ½ inch thick. (dust the baking paper with extra flour)
Place the cut up apple pieces on the dough and roll up. Cut into slices.
Place into a greased muffin tray and bake at 390 degrees for 15 minutes or until lightly golden and they bounce back when touched.

First I had to figure out what the hell self-rising flour was, but then the internet told me you can make your own with one cup of regular flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and one quarter of a teaspoon of salt. Then, I didn’t have any fruit yogurt, so I used a cup of plain greek yogurt instead. Potential for disaster? High. But these actually came out pretty good. The only real issue was “rolling up” the pieces; instead they looked more like muffins then scrolls, but they were still yummy when they were warm with butter on them.

“Apple Pie” from Vanelja

Ingredients
3 sweet apples
1 1/3 cup rolled oats
4 tbsp melted coconut oil
Cinnamon on top

Directions
Preheat the oven to 225 C / 425 F degrees.
Cut 2 apples into pieces and place into a blender.
Puree until smooth.
Add rolled oats and coconut oil. Blend well.
Cover the bottom of a 7 inch cake pan with a parchment paper and grease the sides.
Pour the batter into the pan and spread evenly.
Cut one apple into very thin slices and cover the surface on the pie with apple slices.
Top with plenty of cinnamon.
Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes or until the color is nicely golden and the sides and the surface looks done and dry.
Take out from the oven and let cool.

I think calling this an apple pie is a stretch, even with the quotation marks. I mean, there’s no flaky crust, which is the best part of a pie. That being said, it looks pretty, tastes pretty decent, and is like one third of the calories of a piece of pie so it’s worth making. I did add sugar along with the cinnamon to the top. I’m not a heathen.

And now, a few I didn’t attempt (yet):

Apple Tart from Ingredients, Inc

Ingredients
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
2 apples (Granny Smith or Pink Lady)
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Directions
Preheat oven to 425F.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Lay the puff pastry on a lightly floured surface. With a rolling in, roll out into a 10 x 15-inch rectangle about 1/4 inch thick.
Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and put in the freezer for 5 minutes while you prepare the apples.
With a sharp knife, cut a 1-inch border along the edges of the puff pastry, being careful not to cut more than halfway through the pastry.
Prick the inside of the border with all over with a fork, then sprinkle evenly with half of the sugar.
Arrange apples, slightly overlapping. Sprinkle with remaining sugar.
Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown and apples are tender. Serve warm or at room temperature.

I imagine this is more like apple pie than the aforementioned apple pie recipe, but I personally hate sheet puff pastry – it’s a giant pain in the ass.

Slow Cooker Apple Sauce from Aunt Bee’s Recipes

Ingredients
12 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
2 cinnamon sticks
1/4 of a lemon peel plus 1 tsp of the juice

Directions
Place sliced apples, cinnamon sticks, and lemon peel in the slow cooker.
Drizzle with lemon juice.
Set to low and cook for 5 – 7 hours.
Remove and discard cinnamon sticks and lemon peel.
Blend using an immersion blender or regular blender.
Chill for several hours and serve!

After a surgery a few years ago, apple sauce was one of the few foods I could eat, so now I pretty much hate it. But I bet this is better than the store bought kind.

Apple Chicken from Mommy Hates Cooking

Ingredients
6 Chicken Thighs
2 Red Apples, Sliced
Ground Cinnamon

Directions
Spray a 6 quart slow cooker with non-stick cooking spray.
Place the chicken on the bottom.
Top with the sliced apples.
Sprinkle cinnamon evenly over the apples.
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.

I’d go with boneless chicken breasts instead of thighs, but this sounds pretty delish.

Crock Pot Apple Dumplings from Intelligent Domestications

Ingredients
2 Apples (I use Honeycrisp)
½ box Butter Pecan cake mix
½ stick butter

Directions
Peel and cut up the apples.
Place the apples into the bottom of the crockpot.
Pour the cake mix on top of the apples distributing evenly throughout.
Cut the butter into pats and place around the top of the cake mix.
Cook on low for approximately 1½ to 2 hours.
Crockpot cook times will vary based on your Crockpot so check it after an hour.
The Apple Dumplings are done when the batter is a nice golden brown.

This seems kind of like the apple dump cake I made, and I find it much easier to clean a pan then a crockpot so I think I’ll stick to that. Although, I may try and make it with a butter pecan cake mix next time. .

20

Respond

Email this to a friend

Hey, I saw this on Post Grad Problems. Check it out.

Jenna Crowley

Jenna used to be known as 2NOTBrokeGirls, but then one of the girls actually went broke, so she's struck out on her own. Jenna spends her free time saving the world, one sorority girl at a time (usually while wearing yoga pants), questioning why she decided to get a doctorate, documenting her love of all things cheese related, and hosting the new PGP podcast Don't Take It From Us. You can ask her anything you want about football, using your boobs to get what you want, and pizza at @JennaLCrowley on Twitter or via email at JennaLCrowley@gmail.com.

• @JennaLCrowley
• @donttakeitfromus