Stuffed Baked Apples

Stuffed baked apples are a classic dessert, simple to prepare and very versatile. Here is a basic recipe that you can then customize according to your tastes.

Ingredients

• 4 large apples (such as Golden Delicious or Annurca)
• 50 g of brown sugar or granulated sugar
• 50 g of soft butter
• 40 g of raisins
• 30 g of pine nuts or chopped walnuts
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
• Grated zest of 1 lemon
• A pinch of salt

Optional:

• Crumbled dry biscuits
• Honey or maple syrup

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
2. Wash the apples and dry them. Remove the core using an apple corer or a sharp knife, being careful not to pierce the bottom of the apple. This will create a cavity for the filling.
3. In a bowl, mix the raisins (previously soaked in hot water and well squeezed if you wish), pine nuts or walnuts, sugar, cinnamon, lemon zest, a pinch of salt, and about half of the soft butter until you get a homogeneous mixture.
4. Fill the cavities of the apples with the dry fruit mixture.
5. Place the apples in a baking dish and put a little piece of the remaining butter on top of each apple.
6. If you like, you can add a splash of water to the bottom of the dish to prevent the apples from drying out too much during cooking.
7. Bake the apples for about 30-40 minutes or until they are soft.
8. Serve the apples warm, perhaps with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a vanilla sauce.

Fun Facts

Baked apples are a popular dessert in many countries, especially during the fall and winter seasons. This recipe can be adapted based on personal tastes or local traditions, with the addition of different spices such as ginger or cardamom, or using other types of dried fruit like almonds or prunes. In some variants, a bit of liquor is also added, such as rum or Calvados, which helps to give a more intense flavor to the dessert.