Unlike typical American-style apple pie in a large baking dish or pan, my mother used to make individual apple pie 'squares' with precooked apples. She cooked apples in a heavy pan, but that will require occasional stirring. I like everything simple. Cooking unattended is definitely my style. I decided to try baking apples in the oven.
As I have mentioned in previous postings, I don't care for excessively sweet food. Adding cranberries to apples makes the filling sour and required a lot more sugar than I expected. The filling was still on slightly sour side (sweet and sour) and it may not be for sugar junkies. Since I'm not into pie dough, I wanted to use the filling in mini-tarts. The short dough recipe was straight out of Bo Friberg's The Professional Pastry Chef (3rd edition). Other short dough recipe would work just fine. For garnish, I sliced apples and coated with apricot preserves and topped mini-tarts along with cinnamon sprinkle right before baking.
Apple-Cranberry Filling
Click "Read more" for the recipe.
Ingredients
3 pounds Granny Smith or other baking apples, cored and sliced into 1/16th wedges
Half pound fresh or frozen cranberries
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Zest of one lemon or orange
1cup (or more if you prefer sweeter filling) granulated sugar (I use evaporated cane juice organic sugar)
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1cup brown sugar
Butter
1. Butter 9x13 baking dish. Preheat oven to 350F*.
2. In a large bowl, toss all the ingredients except brown sugar together.
3. Spread the mixture in a prepared dish and evenly sprinkle brown sugar on the top.
4. Cover lightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 1~11/2hours. It's ready when the apples are soft but still holding the shape.*
5. Cool and use in tarts, pies, crepes, strudel, or in anything you want.
*If you like apples to turn applesauce-soft, peel apples and bake at 375F.
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