Granola Stuffed Apple

I noticed the other day that I have yet to post a dessert recipe.  This doesn’t mean I haven’t been eating/making desserts (crock-pot brownies, rice-pudding, pancake things and cookies are just a few examples), I haven’t bothered taking pictures of any of them.  Mostly, this is due to the poor lighting in my dorm after the hour of 6.30pm.  Every picture I take looks ridiculously RED.  It is very strange and misleading.  No, my oatmeal is not bleeding or riddled with jam + cinnamon, it just looks that way in the light.  Ugg.

But, after fighting a bit with the angles of lamps in my dorm room, I managed to snap a few pics of my attempt to make the blah, cold-storage apples on campus more palatable.

Ingredients:

1 medium apple, preferably a flavorful baking kind (such as Gravenstein, but as per-mentioned, a so-so one will work just fine)

1-2 tsp coconut oil

1 tbsp honey + extra for drizzling,

(or maple syrup if you want to keep it vegan!)

1 tsp cinnamon, heaping

¼ cup granola, I used a flax-seed kind from the campus store’s bulk section

1 tbsp carob chips

Directions:

Turn crock-pot onto HIGH to warm up. 

While the crock-pot warms, oil a coffee mug with the coconut oil and core out the apple. To core an apple: use a paring knife to cut out the stem section of both ends at angle, similar to how you would core a strawberry and/or jack-o-lantern.  Once both ends are hollowed out, take your knife and cut in a circular motion through the core of the apple to connect the two hollowed-out sections at each end.  The guts should drop out nicely and you can see through your apple!  Yay!

Place the cored apple inside the mug.  Drizzle the whole apple with the honey and stuff the center with the cinnamon.  If you want an extra sweet kick, stuff a few raisons inside the hollow of the apple.

Put the mug inside the heated crock-pot and switch setting to LOW.  Allow the crock pot to bake the apple for about 2 hrs.

When the apple is soft and slumped looking, carefully take out the mug (it will be quite hot :P).  Rotate the apple a couple of times in the mug to coat with the sugary syrup formed at the bottom of the mug.  Then, stuff the center of the apple with the granola and carob chips.  Top it all off with the left over granola + carob chips and drizzle with a touch of extra honey.  Dig in with a spoon!

Cheers, kaite ;]