Lone Apple Harvest

You know…. it is a little sad that we picked our apple.

Every time I would drive up from being out and about, I would look for the apple. It was the only one. Friends that visited would ask about it and we would all admire it. It was like some sort of pet, that apple. I took many pictures of it through it’s growing cycle. We were amazed that it was even with us, since everyone knows that newly planted fruit trees can take up to 3 to 5 years to actually set fruit.

But not Little Red.

She popped an apple bud right away, right after she was planted here at the Moby farm. The little apple trees are a gift from my friend Frank for helping him with his Frank Sinatra show. They are very special to me. The five little trees are doing pretty good. One is a little weak and I hope she makes it through the winter. But the rest hung in there through the hot dry summer and Maggie’s many many buckets of water. They lost a few leaves, but still, stuck around till the latest frost made them loose most of their last little leaves.

I’ve never grown an apple before.

We had three apple trees at our old house, that we planted and we waited and waiting, but they never set fruit. They might be now, now, that we’re gone, but I’m not sure. I imagine the new owners might have considered them a nuisance, because I planted them a little close to the house, near the deck. I wanted them to grow up and be able to prune them to make a shade canopy over part of the deck. I thought that would be cool.

But here, in our little beloved Moby homestead, we finally got an apple and we cherished it! We treated it well, and I hope that maybe next year, Little Red will put forth a whole crop of beautiful red apples. After all, it knows how to do it well already! Next year, should be a breeze!

Well, I took that guy inside and we had some other apples already to go for a special desert, featuring our own Moby Apple!

It’s an easy easy recipe, one that I altered a good deal from the Pioneer Woman’s apple dumplins. We call this apple dumplin pie.

Just peel up a handful of apples… about 4 or 5. And you need some crescent rolls dough. 1 can. Peel and slice up your apples. And I like to add a little white sugar and cinnamon to the mix and stir it up good. If your apples are really sweet, then you don’t need much, maybe a half a cup or so. If they are pretty tart, you might want to add a little more.

Once they are all chopped up and mixed with a little white sugar and cinnamon, I open up that can of dough and carefully peel it so that it stays in sheets, two rolls to a piece. I put the first two on the bottom of the pan. And then I pour the apples in the middle. and then one roll on each side, the long ways, and a double piece on the top. I just kind of pinch it all together and all, just make sure to cover up your apples if you can. This is the lazy way to make apple dumplins!

Here’s the fun part. I take and melt 1/2 a stick of butter in the microwave a few moments. Don’t burn it. Once that’s done, I dump a cup of white sugar in the measuring cup. Stir it up good. And then for a little kick, I add just a bit of lemon lime soda, like Sprite or Mountain Dew. Just enough to sort of make it easy to pour. Really not a whole lot, in reality, maybe 3 or 4 tablespoons. You’ll know. Not quite as thick as icing, but not tooooo liquid either.

I like to add a little dash of cinnamon as well. And then just pour over the whole dough pile in the pan. Pop it in the oven for about oh, 45 minutes or so. I cover it lightly with a piece of foil. I want the apples to cook nice and soft and I don’t want to burn the top. For the last 15-20 minutes I take off the foil and let it poof up nice.

Now, if you find that it’s a little tooooo juicy, you can pour off a little of the liquid. But not too much, you want that stuff to make a syrup of sorts in the pie. Take it out and let it sit a bit and cool. Serve warm with some vanilla icecream and you have the lazy way to make super tasty apple dumplins!!!