Hot Apple Dumplings

Hot out of the oven in Great-Grandma Daniel's skillet

When my eyes creak open on the morning, I find my mind picking over the events that led me to run away from everything and everyone and head to the hills, literally. The answers I dig up in those early morning mental meanderings are all just a variation on a theme: STRESS. Some stress is so small you barely notice, like long carpool lines at the schools, clocking a hundred miles a day on 8 lane freeways, keeping teeth white and abs toned and roots retouched, answering endless texts and tweets and emails. Those little stressors can create enough cumulative pressure to make people crazy, but it's so gradual that you don't notice the internal pressure gauges nearing the danger zone. I always mentally point to a hundred different little stressors that made me snap. And there were a few big ones too. Trailing the paramedics into the hospital behind my little Brynna lying lifeless on the gurney tops the list, followed by surgeries and suicides and financial and relationship disasters. Brynna survived thank God, but somewhere along the line this year I lost it. I swam in a sea of stress every day, but I looked around and saw that everyone was doing it, so I just kept paddling.

Ready for winter, pioneer home in Missouri

     I found that it was almost impossible to scale down my life and remove stress. So I removed myself, and now that I have this new blank slate of a life I'm doing things different. Over 16 years ago my dear friend Kalei Brinkerhoff baked hot apple dumplings while  we sat at her kitchen table playing Rook with our husbands until 4 in the morning. It was cold outside, Oregon drizzle plinking against the shingles, but we laughed and yawned and warmed ourselves on apple dumplings and hot cocoa, and I decided to start a monthly tradition of cards and apple dumplings with friends at home. But I've been too busy for 16 years, and that recipe card went untouched. Until last Saturday, when I claimed a whole day for myself and my kids to do whatever we wanted to do, and nothing we had to do. I sat on the porch watching squirrels bounce in the leaves, took a bath for so long the water got cold, read fairy tales to Brody, and let Chloe give me a fishtail braid. Then we baked so much food that we had to dole some of the cupcakes and bread out to neighbors, and proved my theory that the aroma of butter and sugar wafting from a sizzling oven has strong anti-anxiety effects. My hair hasn't been professionally treated for 6 months, and my teeth have lost that eye-scorching whiteness, but it's Arkansas and people here would rather enjoy a pan full of hot apple dumplings than be blinded by perfect teeth. My sweet 91 year old neighbor Mr. Broome said his apple dumpling was so good he couldn't make himself save half for later like he planned. Neither could I. 

Apple Dumplings

The recipe for Apple Dumplings was available free in Gold Medal flour bags, as noted in a 1938 advertisement, and has also been included in many of the company’s cookbooks over the years, beginning with the 1904 Christmas Edition of Gold Medal Flour Cook Book.

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727

14 reviews

• Prep Time 25 min
• Total Time 1 hr 5 min
• Servings 6

Ingredients

2

cups all-purpose flour or whole wheat flour

1

teaspoon salt

2/3

cup plus 2 tablespoons cold butter or margarine

4

to 5 tablespoons cold water

6

baking apples, about 3 inches in diameter (such as Braeburn, Granny Smith or Rome)

3

tablespoons raisins

3

tablespoons chopped nuts

2 1/2

cups packed brown sugar

1 1/3

cups water

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Directions

• 1Heat the oven to 425°F. In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt. Cut in the butter, using a pastry blender or fork, until particles are the size of small peas. Sprinkle with the cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing well with fork until all flour is moistened. Gather the dough together, and press it into a 6x4-inch rectangle.
• 2Lightly sprinkle flour over a cutting board or countertop. Cut off 1/3 of the dough with a knife; set aside. On the floured surface, place 2/3 of the dough. Flatten dough evenly, using hands or a rolling pin, into a 14-inch square; cut into 4 squares. Flatten the remaining 1/3 of the dough into a 14x7-inch rectangle; cut into 2 squares. You will have 6 squares of dough.
• 3Remove the stem end from each apple. Place the apple on a cutting board. Using a paring knife, cut around the core by pushing the knife straight down to the bottom of the apple and pull up. Move the knife and make the next cut. Repeat until you have cut around the apple core. Push the core from the apple. (Or remove the cores with an apple corer.) Peel the apples with a paring knife.
• 4Place 1 apple on the center of each square of dough. In a small bowl, mix the raisins and nuts. Fill the center of each apple with raisin mixture. Moisten the corners of each square with small amount of water; bring 2 opposite corners of dough up over apple and press corners together. Fold in sides of remaining corners; bring corners up over apple and press together. Place dumplings in a 13x9-inch (3-quart) glass baking dish.
• 5In a 2-quart saucepan, heat the brown sugar and 1 1/3 cups water to boiling over high heat, stirring frequently. Carefully pour the sugar syrup around the dumplings.
• 6Bake about 40 minutes, spooning syrup over apples 2 or 3 times, until crust is browned and apples are tender when pierced with a fork.
• 7Serve warm or cooled with syrup from pan.
• Thank you Betty Crocker Cookbook!