A Pair of Apple Dumplings Baked in Cinnamon Sauce

Going by the title this could refer to my husband and I however:

This is one of the Apple Dumplings I made that was baked in Cinnamon Sauce.

Frankly this thing was a pain in my tuckus but it smells, looks, and tastes incredible!!

It's this amazing mixture of crunchy pastry, soft apples, sweetness, and the bite of cinnamon.



If you want to impress someone with a dessert, this is definatly the one you should go with!!

Geez, I sound like an infomercial.. oy gevalt.


Here's how you do it:


Make your pie crust:

5 TBSP soft unsalted butter
4 TBSP (1/4 cup) Crisco
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cake flour
1 TBSP sugar
1/4 TSP salt
3 TBSP ice water

1) Mix the Crisco and butter together until it's smooth and well blended.
2) Place the mixture into a piece of cling wrap making it into a stick (think stick of butter).
3) Freeze the mixture for at least 5 hours (it needs to be really hard because you're going to grate it into your flour mixture).
4) Once your Crisco / butter mixture is hardened, mix flour, sugar, and salt together in a medium sized bowl and set aside.
5) Grate the Crisco / butter stick onto a piece of wax paper. (If there is a small bit left just cut that into small little chucks).
6) Put the Crisco / butter mixture into the flour bowl and using a fork stir them together. Once it's been blended well enough, your mixture will be crumbly with the largest crumbs no larger than 1/4 inch in size.
7) Add the TBSPs of water until a soft dough forms and there is no loose flour left. Your dough should feel cold.
8) Gather the dough and kneed it gently on a flour coated surface 3 or 4 times. You may need to kneed a bit more until your dough is smooth but don't overwork it!
9) Wrap your dough in a piece of cling wrap and stick it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to set.

Cook your Cinnamon Sauce:

1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 TSP ground cinnamon
1 TBSP unsalted butter

- Put the water, sugar, cinnamon, and butter in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the sugar dissolves and the butter melts. Set the sauce aside to cool while you prepare your dumplings.

Make your Dumplings:

Pie Crust you previously made
2 Medium Apples (I used those bright red ones.. mmm) peeled, cored, and left whole
2 TSP unsalted butter
2 TSP sugar
1/8 TSP ground cinnamon (I used a bit more cinnamon than this because I love cinnamon)

1) Roll out your piecrust dough and cut two 8 inch squares. Transfer each square into a 9 inch pie pan that's been sprayed with cooking spray.
2) Cut a slice off the bottom of each apple so they sit flat and place the an apple in the center of one of the dough squares.
3) Put 1 TSP butter into the center of one of the apples and sprinkle with half of your cinnamon / sugar mixture.
4) Bring up the corners of the square to the top center of the apple and seal. (Pinch the seams to seal them but don't squish them against the apple)
5) If there are any breaks in your dough you can just press little pieces of dough into the breaks.
6) Use a fork to prick the pastry twice on top of each dumpling.
(I took the left over dough and cut out some little leaf designs and put them on top of the apples to make it look cute)

Bake:

1) Preheat the oven to 400*
2) Bake for 15 minutes. At the end of the 15 minutes use a large spoon to baste the apples with the cinnamon sauce.
3) Bake for another 10 minutes. At the end of the 10  minutes baste the apples again.
4) Bake for a final 10  minutes.

The crust should be light brown with the seams slightly darker. Once they are out of the oven, baste them a final time with whatever cinnamon sauce is left in the pie pan. It'll be really thick and gooey at this point so it'll be slightly difficult.

Let them cool for 2-5 minutes and serve with whipped cream!