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Apple Roly Poly
Make a sweet biscuit dough; roll out thin and spread with a layer of chopped apples or apple sauce or other apple mixture, Sprinkle with sugar, butter, and spice and roll the dough over as for jelly roll. Bake in moderate oven one hour, or steam two.
APPLE DUMPLINGS, BAKED, No. I Peel and core cooking apples, filling centres with sugar. Roll out biscuit dough rather thin and cut in squares large enough to cover apples. Place an apple in the centre of each square; bring up the corners of the dough and fasten by pinching and twisting dough together. Place in baking pan close together and when pan is full pour over them a syrup made with one pint of water and one pound of sugar, letting this come half way to the top of the dumplings. Place in rather brisk oven and bake about forty minutes. Cinnamon may be sprinkled over the tops of each. This is the best form of apple dumplings though there are other good methods.
APPLE DUMPLINGS, BAKED, No. 2 The apples may be cored and quartered; placed in earthen baking-dish with a square of dough tucked down around each (not under them) a little sugar and water added, and baked. Individual baking-dishes may be used, instead.
Three related puddings built on the same base: a sweet baking-powder biscuit dough wrapped around apples. The dough is the hinge — it must be mixed quickly and handled lightly, or the roll turns tough and the dumpling casings go leathery under the syrup.
- "Sweet biscuit dough"This is an American baking-powder biscuit dough with sugar added — roughly 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 2-3 tablespoons sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, 4-5 tablespoons butter or shortening cut in, and about ¾ cup milk. It is not a sweet cookie dough or a British sweet pastry.
- Oven temperaturesA moderate oven is roughly 350F; a "rather brisk" oven roughly 400-425F. These equivalences are only approximate. The dumplings are best at the higher end, so the dough sets before the syrup soaks into it.
- The roly poly's hourAn hour at 350F suits a full-length roll; a thinner or shorter roll may be done in 40-45 minutes — look for a firm, browned crust and juices bubbling at the seam. Set the roll seam-side down on a parchment-lined rimmed sheet, since the filling leaks.
- Steaming insteadTwo hours of steaming gives a softer, steamed-pudding texture closer to the older boiled rolls. Wrap the roll loosely in buttered parchment and then foil (the period equivalent was a floured cloth), leaving room to swell, and keep the water at a steady simmer, topping it up so it never boils dry.
- The syrup, in modern measureOne pint of water and one pound of sugar is 2 cups water to about 2¼ cups granulated sugar. That is a great deal of syrup; it is meant to come halfway up the dumplings and to reduce into a sauce. Use a deep pan, not a sheet, or it will boil over.
- Choosing apples"Cooking apples" means firm and tart — Bramley, Granny Smith, Northern Spy, Rhode Island Greening. Softer eating apples collapse into liquid inside the dough and leave a hollow casing.
- SpiceThe recipe leaves the spice open. Cinnamon is the default; a little nutmeg, clove, or grated lemon zest with the sugar is period-appropriate and keeps the sweetness from flattening.
- YieldThe roly poly serves 6-8 in slices. Dumplings are one apple per person; a 9x13 pan holds six medium apples snugly, which is what "close together" means — they should support each other as the dough softens.
- ServingAll three are served warm with the pan syrup spooned over, and with cream, hard sauce, or a plain custard. Cold, the biscuit dough goes dense.
The roly poly belongs to the family of rolled suet and dough puddings that came to American kitchens from Britain, where jam roly poly was a nursery and boarding-house staple; the American version swaps the suet crust for a baking-powder biscuit dough — the older pudding was boiled or steamed in a cloth, the newer one went into the oven. Apple dumplings have a longer and more regional history, strongly associated with Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic, where they were eaten as often at breakfast as at dinner. The confident aside that the syrup-baked version "is the best form of apple dumplings" is worth noting, and the syrup method does have a practical argument behind it, since the sugar and water keep the underside of the dough from drying while the apple steams inside its wrapper.