Tasty Tuesdays-Apples!

Thanks to Alissa at 33 Shades of Green for continuing to do this blogging meme. I always enjoy participating in it every week. It gives me a great excuse to try new recipes that I've never made before.

Last night I decided to have a little fun with apples. I have a bunch that were pretty small I thought it would be neat to try a recipe that I've been hanging on to for awhile that involves baking red apples.

APPLES TO THE THIRD POWER

Ingredients:

4 large apples (I used 5 smallish ones)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 cup apple butter (I couldn't find this so I used regular butter and they turned out great)
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup apple cider (I decided to be adventurous and used sparkling apple cider)


Here's what you do:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Core the apples. Stir together sugar and cardamom, and put in 1 teaspoon in the cavity of each apple. Fill to the top with apple butter. Top each with a slice of butter and the remaining cardamom sugar.

Arrange the apples in a pie tin (or cookie sheet), and pour the cider all around them.
Bake 50 minutes, until soft. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the apples to serving plates. Transfer the pan juices to a saucepan and boil until reduced slightly, for about 2 minutes. Pour juice around the apples. (I didn't do this last step because the juice was already fairly thick and syrupy when it came out of the oven)

I was thrilled with the final results! We threw some vanilla ice cream on top of them and this really brought out all the yummy flavors. There's really nothing better than hot apples with cold ice cream! This is a super easy recipe so I definitely encourage you to try it out for yourself.