Baked cardamom apples and vanilla ice cream (Still Baking #7)

Something simple tonight! I often forget to bake anything with apples because I like to eat them straight up so much. But then I'm always amazed by how freakin' tasty they are if you bake them. Really, doesn't matter what spices you use, whether or not you use additional sugar, etc, there's just something magical about a nice soft baked apple.

These are pretty all-out for baked apples. They're a nice way to dress up some apples you maybe got from Trader Joe's for $2 for a sack and then realized were kinda light on the flavor compared to the apples you usually eat. Or make them with really good apples for a super decadent apple treat sometime. Your call!



Baked cardamom apples
Serves 5 (or however many apples you make)

5 medium apples
10 tsps brown sugar (or 2 tsps per apple)
2 1/2 tsps cardamom (1/2 tsp per apple)
1 tsp cinnamon (like 1/4 tsp per apple, this one doesn't scale as well... just not a ton of cinnamon)

2 1/2 tsps earth balance or other vegan butter (1/2 tsp per apple)

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Halve the apples and scoop out the seeds.
3. Put about 1/4 tsp earth balance in the emptied out portion of each half. (You want 1/2 tsp spread across the entire apple.)
4. Mix together the rest of the ingredients (sugar, cardamom, cinnamon) in a small bowl.
5. Spread about 1 tbsp of dry filling across one apple (so like 1/2 tbsp per half). Concentrate on the cavity with the EB, but feel free to sprinkle some around on the rest of the apple innard too.
6. Stick apple halves back together, and stand them up on end in a baking dish.
7. Bake for 45 minutes.

They'll look kinda like this when they're done:



That's it! We ate ours with scoops of vanilla soy ice cream from TJ's. Super tasty.

Here's your daily Emperor. We went up to Vasona Lake Park in Los Gatos today-- cool little park with a miniature train and a carousel as well as a gigantic playground. We mostly played on the playground today but also took the train once and rode the horsies once. You can see how excited the Emperor was about the train: