Outdoor Cooking Guild – Apples

With apple season still going strong, the Outdoor Cooking Guild has done its first group project of cooking apples outside!

The recipes range from apple crisp to grilled apples, with a couple of dumplings and a pie in between. The other members of the Outdoor Cooking Guild that joined in have their posts here:

• The BBQ Grail has grilled apples with sour cream caramel sauce
• Cowgirl’s Country Life made apple smoked apple dumplin’s with caramel sauce
• Bob’s Brew & Que did an apple crisp
• My Year On The Grill shows a great way to use a grill to bake a cheddar stuffed apple pie
• No Excuses BBQ has a great looking apple crumble, on his Bubba Ho-Keg, so I’m guessing he’s a Bruce Campbell fan like me!
• Indirect Heat shows a really great looking apple crisp

And what did I do?  I had a suggestion before of doing dumplings, so I did those, too.

I made a standard pie crust:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp demerara sugar
• 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) butter
• 1/3 cup ice cold water

Cut the butter into small (pea sized) pieces and place in the freezer to get very cold (10-15 minutes). Mix the dry ingredients and add the butter, mixing with your hands or a pastry blender until the mixture is crumbly. Add the water and mix until just blended.

I used Winesap apples because 1. I like them and 2. they keep their shape when baked.  I put 4 of them through my handy dandy apple peeler/corer/slicer.  I left them as a spiral cut apple, but had on hand a mix of 1/4 cup flour, a couple tablespoons of Turbinado sugar and a healthy dose of cinnamon.  I put the mixture between th spiral slices of the apples and sprinkled it on the outside, too.

I divided the dough into fourths and rolled out each portion between pieces of waxed paper, then cut squares out of the rolled dough.  I placed the apples in the middle of the slices, added a dollop of butter and closed the square on top of the apple, folding the edges around the apple.  I thought about doing an egg wash, which could easily be done and would brown the crust a bit more, but I decided to try the dumplings with just the crust and a bit of turbinado sugar.

One thing my mom always did when making pies was to take the extra dough, roll it out, add butter, sugar and cinnamon, then roll it up and cut into cinnamon rolls. I did this, too, and added those right with the dumplings, though they do cook faster, so they have to be watched.

The dumplings baked at 350 for about 35 minutes.  I left the very top open to allow steam to escape, and I put a toothpick down into the apple to make sure the apples were cooked.  And I served the dumplings with a bit of Mayfield vanilla ice cream for a great fall dessert!

Thanks to the other Outdoor Cooking Guild members that joined in! I’d love to hear what kind of apple dishes you’ve had in your past that make you think “fall”…