“It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.” Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost
Peel the apples, uncore the slices and lay them on pastry crusts. The hole from the core may be filled with cinnamon, butter and sugar and sometimes dried fruit such as raisins, sultanas, or currants. Wrap the pastry crust around the apples and seal the seams to form them as dumplings. Place the dumplings on the pan, pour the spiced sauce over it and bake it in the oven. Voila, baked dumplings.
Lack of time or power outage for the electricity run oven.
Boil the dumplings and serve with brown sugar, cinnamon, berry preserve, maple syrup, honey, cottage cheese, chocolate syrup or any toppings of choice. That’s boiled dumplings for dessert.
These pastry-wrapped apple were among the earliest fruit puddings, being a popular add on at major social gatherings and had at all social levels. Served as breakfast, main side dish or dessert, there were popular and could be had cold, hot or just as it was. Although the boiled versions were the initial recipes, it was the baked ones that were more popular across the menus of established restaurants.
“A man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings.” Charles Lamb
While the Austrians have their apfelnockerln (“large, soft” apple dumplings), Czech cuisine have their fruit dumplings, including apple known as ovocné knedlíky and are eaten with quark or tvaroh cheese, often served as a complete meal. The German Apfelklöße (1801) are elaborate “small pudding of apples,” cored and filled with jam or marmalade, sometimes raisins or nuts, wrapped in pastry, boiled, and topped with a sweetened sauce containing raisins, sugar, cinnamon, and wine. While in the United Kingdom, these apple dumplings were referred to as form of suet puddings with the prepared dumplings tied in cloth and boiled. On the other side of the western sphere, apple dumplings were considered as cultural staples (United States).
Seasonal fruits were used similarly to make fruit dumplings. Like the Austrian and Hungarian Knödel ( dumplings stuffed with plums), Crotian Knedle sa šljivama (dessert dish of plum dumpling with a potato dough), Austrian Marillenknödel (apricot dumplings) and the traditional Czech recipes of dumpling filled with plums, apricots, strawberries or blueberries. A similar dish is baked apples (minus the pastry shell). Unpeeled apples are cored (some preparations remove only the top part of the core leaving a half-inch at the bottom) and stuffed with fillings such as butter, brown sugar, currants, raisins, nuts, oatmeal, spices and other ingredients.
Made any way, boiled or baked, pastry covered or not, these perfect pocket sized simple desserts are perfect add-ons for simple, elaborate or too tired to cook days. With imagination running riot, what better way is there to make perfect use of the cold weather, indulge the sugar cravings with apples and sweet and make way for this traditional recipe not just simple and wholesome but a treat for the artistic eye and creative cooking.
Sugar And Spice... Among Other Things 
