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Apple Dumplings
1/2 recipe for shortcake 3 large apples 4 tablespoons sugar 1 tablespoon butter boiling water Roll the dough into a sheet and cut in five-inch squares. Core and halve the apples. Fold each piece of apple in a square of paste, bringing the corners to the core. Turn dumplings upside down in a well greased dripping pan. Dot with bits of butter, sprinkle with sugar. Set the pan in a quick oven and after 10 minutes, pour on boiling water to half cover. Baste often and bake 30 minutes in a moderate oven. Serve with cream or the syrup from the pan. Serves 6.
A baked dumpling that makes its own sauce: the water poured into the pan combines with the butter and sugar into a light syrup while the pastry steams from below and browns above. Two oven temperatures are called for, and the recipe expects you to change them mid-bake.
- Oven temperaturesA "quick oven" is roughly 400-425F, and the "moderate oven" for the remaining 30 minutes about 350-375F; these equivalents are approximate. Start hot to set the pastry, then drop the heat when the water goes in.
- The shortcake doughThis most likely means a rich baking-powder biscuit dough rather than a sweetened sponge shortcake; the actual quantity depends on the book's own shortcake recipe. Any standard biscuit dough rolled about 1/4 inch thick will behave the same way.
- Dripping panA shallow rectangular roasting or sheet pan, deep enough to hold water halfway up the dumplings without slopping over.
- Turn upside downInverting presumably puts the folded corners underneath, so the seams sit under the dumpling's own weight. Pinching them together first will help them hold in the syrup.
- Adding the waterPour the boiling water down the side of the pan, not over the dumplings, or you will wash off the sugar and soften the browned tops. Water that is already boiling keeps the oven from losing its heat.
- BastingBaste every 8 to 10 minutes with the pan liquid. This is what glazes the tops and reduces the water to syrup; skip it and you get pale pastry sitting in sweetened water.
- ApplesUse a firm baking apple that holds its shape over 40 minutes of heat, such as Braeburn, Granny Smith or Northern Spy. Soft dessert apples collapse and the pastry caves in.
- YieldThree apples halved gives six dumplings, one per serving. Test with a skewer through the pastry into the fruit; the apple should offer no resistance.
Apple dumplings in a pastry wrapper are an old English and American farmhouse sweet, and this version belongs to the baked, water-in-the-pan school rather than the older method of tying the dumpling in a floured cloth and boiling it. Baking in syrup gave a browner, richer result and needed only the shallow dripping pan already in use for roasting. It is a frugal dish: a half batch of dough, three apples and a spoonful of butter, served with cream or simply with the syrup from the pan.