Among other truly American things (such as chocolate chip cookies), I'm not really a big fan of apples and apple desserts. Shocking, I know. I only really enjoy eating Macintosh and Granny Smith apples in their natural state, and I would rather not eat apples baked or cooked out of their natural state. As it happens, I had a pretty much untouched bag of apples that were beginning to wrinkle, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to bake them into something I wouldn't mind consuming and that I would be able to bake without making a special trip to the grocery store.

I've been wanting to bake an apple tartlet or galette, one of those beautiful ones made of puff pastry and obscenely thinly-sliced apples, but alas, I didn't have puff pastry lying around in my freezer (now I understand why they advise you to keep a couple of extra packages handy). I've also been wanting to make fruit tarts with almond, since I love any type of fruit tart with an almond paste or custard base. I, too, do not have almond paste lying around, not even in stale marzipan form.

So I decided to make something just a step away from an apple pie: an apple crostada. Which is even simpler than pie, since you don't need a pie dish. I wanted one that incorporated caramel sauce, since I thought that would make the idea of eating baked apples more appealing to me. I found this Betty Crocker recipe and adapted it minimally to my needs.


Apple Crostada
About 6 servings

Ingredients

... for the crust:
1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of firm butter or margarine, cut into 1/2 inch piece
3 tablespoons of cold water
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract

... for the filling:
1/2 cup of sugar
3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
4 medium apples, chopped (I sliced them as thinly as possible)
1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon

Instructions
To make the crust, combine 1 1/4 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Add in the butter pieces, mixing with your fingertips until the flour mixture begins to form into pea-sized crumbs.

In a small bowl, mix the water and vanilla and sprinkle the mixture over the flour mixture, one tablespoon at a time, moistening the flour while tossing with a fork.

Roll the flour into a ball and shape into a flat, 5-inch round. Wrap in plastic wrap and cool in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes, or until it is firm.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. While the crust is cooling in the refrigerator, prepare your apple filling. In a large bowl, combine 1/2 cup of sugar, 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour and ground cinnamon. Stir in your apple pieces until they are coated.

Remove the crust from the refrigerator and roll it out into a round of approximately 12 inches in diameter. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Place apple mixture at the center of the crust, working your way outwards to about 2 inches from the edge. Fold the edges over the apple mixture, creating a crust. Bake about 30 minutes, or until the crust is a golden brown. If desired, drizzle or brush caramel sauce onto the top of the apples before serving.





This was such an easy, fool-proof recipe. The original recipe tells you to make an apple pile inside the crust, but I found that it became unmanageable within seconds, so I ended up stacking up my slices. I found that the cinnamon-flour-sugar mixture I tossed the apples in were sweet enough that I didn't need to use my leftover caramel sauce at all (bummer). But it was delicious -- not so sweet that those with no sweet tooth complained, and definitely sweet enough for me to make my undesirable apples palatable. Or even more than palatable.  I really enjoyed the crust on this -- it was slightly sweet, and reminded of Pepperidge Farm's Chessmen cookies. I have nothing bad to say about that! I will try this again in the future with summer fruits -- maybe cherries or peaches.