Kitchen creativity is inspirational. It becomes uniquely your design and it brings smiles to your friends and family. What a great way to start the year. I decided to bake some apples to accompany our traditional ham dinner on New Year’s day. When I sent the pics to my friends, they all asked for the recipe. Enjoy! © Kelly McBride Loft
Kelly’s Brandied Baked Apples
The secret to baking apples is to use Red Delicious apples and to core the apples correctly. It is important to remove the center core, seeds and seed structure WITHOUT BREAKING THROUGH THE SKIN OF THE APPLE. The reason is that the cored apples serve as vessels for the flavorings. If you poke a hole in the skin, the liquid leaks out. The other thing that I do is to take my smallest hors d’oeuvre fork with the shortest prongs and puncture the inside of the apple without breaking the outside skin. This allows the flavoring to penetrate the fruit of the apple. The apples will need to sit upright in a heat proof baking dish. When the apples are cored, fill each cavity with Brandy. Let that sit for about 3 minutes so that the liquor penetrates the apple. Then, push a tablespoon of butter into each core and on top of that pack as much brown sugar that each apple will hold. Drizzle some Brandy on top of that. Pour about a half inch level of Brandy into the heat proof dish. Add a cinnamon stick, per apple, into that Brandy so that the cinnamon sticks float on the sides of the apples. Bake the apples, uncovered, for 1 hour at 375 ̊. Just before serving, set the cinnamon sticks on top of each apple. If any of the core liquid has drained out, refill the core with the Brandy in the dish. Happy New Year! © Kelly McBride Loft