Campfire Baked Apples

a tasty autumn treat. just look at that oozing butter!

Here’s another use for the delicious spiced compound butter detailed in my Hot Buttered Rum recipe. We ate these for breakfast on our most recent outing, but they make an equally good dessert, especially for cold-weather camping. The butter, prepared at home, is the most fiddly step of the process. The apples themselves can be assembled in just a few minutes, and require about 20 minutes of baking over a campfire.

Equipment:

• fire-safe deep cooking pot
• sharp knife
• aluminum foil

Ingredients:

• apples (however many you like – at least one per person)
• spiced butter compound (recipe here)
• crunchy cereal granola (I used Rogers Hazlenut-Honey, but use whatever kind you like)
• dried cranberries

Method:

• Using a sharp knife, cut around the stem of the apples and hollow out the core, making sure to keep the base of the apple intact. I found a spoon was also helpful in scraping out the core and seeds. This might take a few minutes, depending on how many apples you’re baking
• Place cored apples in deep baking dish. Try to arrange them so they won’t fall over when you move the pan to the fire
• Squish a few dried cranberries into the hollowed-out apples
• Sprinkle a bit of granola on top of the cranberries
• Stuff a few more cranberries on top of the granola until the apples are nicely packed full of goodies
• Lay a thick slab of compound butter on top of the cranberries. Press down on the butter with your fingers so most of it will melt into the apples
• Pour a bit of water around the apples in the bottom of the pan (this prevents burning)
• Cover the pan with aluminum foil and carefully set it on a grill over the fire, or nestle it right in the hot coals
• Give the pan a quarter-turn every five minutes or so to ensure even cooking
• After about twenty minutes, check your apples. They should look soft and the skins should start to split down the sides
• Once soft, the apples are ready to eat! Serve on their own or with a hot cereal like oatmeal for breakfast, or, if you’re really fancy and have the means to keep it cold, ice cream!

Using a crunchy, pre-cooked granola as opposed to uncooked rolled oats really speeds up the cooking process. The granola will soften up in the hot, buttery apples, and the cranberries absorb some of the juices and get nice and plump.

Enjoy!