Mini Apple Crisp Baked Apples

Thanks for sharing!

The perfect individual sized dessert, these mini apple crisp baked apples are the perfect mix of baked apples and crisp topping. Serve it with a scoop of ice cream for a perfect dessert!

Are they a baked apple or apple crisp? These fun desserts are a little bit of both.

Tasty baked apples topped with crunchy brown sugar and oat topping. They are perfect individually sized treats that might just become your favorite fall dessert.

Baked apples have a bit of an inside joke with my husband and his friends. For a cookout many moons ago, he picked up a bag of apples to make a treat for everyone.

He carefully wrapped the apples in foil and put them over a fire. Yep. Whole wrapped apples wrapped in foil.

He could have cored them and put some butter, brown sugar and cinnamon in them, but he didn’t. He could have sliced them and given them a similar treatment in a skillet, but again he didn’t.

In all fairness, this was long before he met me. I’m sure he would have known better otherwise.

To say the results were underwhelming seems to be an understatement. The guys still love to laugh about it to this day.

Apparently that was just the start of a while conversation of ideas related to the apples. A conversation that may or may not have been fueled by an adult beverage or two.

Either way, it is always a source of entertainment and belly laughs when it comes up. I would like to say that inspired him to perfect the art of actually making an edible baked apple, but it hasn’t.

So baked apples are my department and honestly I’m ok with it staying that way! These baked apple halves are the perfect size to indulge a bit without going overboard.

I go crazy buying apples when the season finally comes around.  There is nothing like coming home with a bag of freshly picked apples.

We all love them, so sometimes I have to be protective of my treasure.  Otherwise we can gobble them up in no time.

So I set a few aside for recipe creation and quickly hid a few in the back of the crisper drawer. My lunchbox was quite happy I did too.

Those beauties really were a highlight of lunch while they lasted!

They have such a beautiful flavor, I didn’t want to go crazy hiding it with other ingredients. Instead I just cut them in half, scooped out the core and stuffed them with the ingredients you’d find in a typical apple crisp.

After all they are a classic for a reason. The results were amazing! The apples were fork tender, but not mushy.

The topping was sweet and golden and crunchy. They were fabulous on their own, but a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce certainly didn’t hurt them.

Little Dude is always an excellent helper in the kitchen. He put together the topping and helped the apple scraps find their way to the compost bin.

Then he helped fill the apples. We both anxiously waited for the timer to buzz. The house smelled so good and we could not wait to sink our teeth into one.

They were worth the wait! My husband had been napping on the couch and rose from the dead as soon as he heard the rattle of plates.

He knew he had better make his way to the table asap! We all agreed that this is definitely the proper way to bake an apple!

I hope you have been enjoying all the apple recipes so far this week. Which ones have been your favorites so far?

I’d love to know if you’ve made any #appleweek recipes you loved, from this year or years past.

What kind of apples are good for baking?

Some apples work better for baking then others.  There are varieties that are more likely to hold their shape through the baking and others that are more likely to turn to mush.

Luckily the mush will likely be delicious, but not idea for pretty presentation!  So here are a few varieties that hold up and present well:

Jonagold apples are great for baking.  They are one of my favorite apples to get at our local orchard.  They work perfect for recipes like this because they are fabulous on their own and bake well.  They don’t store as well though, so enjoy them during the peak of the season.

Jonagolds are a mix between Jonathan and golden delicious.  Jonathan’s themselves are a great baking apple and tend to be just a tad bit more tart than the Jonagold. Both are crisp, delicious and great for cooking with. 

Braeburn apples are another flavorful apple in their own right, so they are perfect for a recipe like this where the apples are the star of the show.

Pink Ladies are a fabulous option.  They have that mix of sweet and tart and hold their shape wonderfully.

Honeycrisp apples are basically the be all end all of apples.  They are wonderful in almost any situation, especially if that situation involves some oatmeal streusel and a scoop of ice cream.

Granny Smith apples are sort of the classic baking apple.  They are naturally tart, so the finished product doesn’t end up too sweet. 

The skins on granny Smith apples do tend to be a little tougher than the rest, but it certainly isn’t a deal breaker.  You may want to reserve them for something like a pie though, so you can remove the peel.

More apple varieties to try in baking: Fuji, crispin, golden delicious, and winesnap.

Thanks for sharing!