baked apples with cinnamon and walnuts

Baked apples make your kitchen smell incredible. That’s not the only reason to make them, but it’s a good one. This recipe serves 4 because that many apples fit neatly in a pie dish, but you can double it if needed. Just make sure the baking dish holds the apples snugly or the juices will evaporate. You’ll love my easy technique for coring.

ingredients

1 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons honey
4 crisp apples, such as Ambrosia, Fuji, or Gala
2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 ounces chopped walnuts (a generous 1/2 cup)

directions

Preheat an oven to 350°F. Put the orange juice and honey in a glass pie dish and warm for about 30 seconds in a microwave or a few minutes in the heated oven until honey melts; stir to blend in honey and set pie dish aside.

To core the apples, scoop out the flesh, starting at the stem end, with the large part of a melon baller. Keep scooping until you hit the seeds, scoop out seeds, then stop (there should be a little flesh left in the bottom of the apple). With a vegetable peeler, pare away the skin around the opening and about a third of the way down the apple so you have a wide stripe of peeled apple at the top. In a small bowl, mash together the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon; mix in the walnuts. Spoon equal amounts of this mixture into the apple cavities. Put stuffed apples in pie dish and spoon some of the honey-orange juice over each apple, being sure to moisten peeled part.

Bake the apples until soft to the touch, about 45 minutes. Serve warm or cool with pan juices spooned over each serving.

note: You can vary this recipe all sorts of ways: substitute pecans for the walnuts, apple juice for the orange juice, other spices for the cinnamon (try a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice…things you would use in a pumpkin pie), or replace some or all of the nuts with golden raisins.