Slow Cooker Apple Recipes | Crock Pot Baked Apples

I was looking for some fruit at the supermarket recently and nothing really took my fancy... until I saw some beautiful shinny green Granny Smith apples!  Immediately I could smell apple pie spice wafting through our home and I could see us enjoying baked apples and icecream.

Luckily they weren't either enormous or tiny, they were all similarly portioned, (perfect for my 4L slow cooker) so I selected the best looking 6 and headed off to the baking isle to get a box of Australian raisins.  You can use any kind of dried fruit, cranberries, mixed dried fruit, regular raisin - whatever you have on hand.  But I know for slow cooker baked apples, my family really enjoy big fat raisins.

If you want to make the raisins go a bit further, make one third of the filling something else.  I always have raisins top and bottom, but in the middle you could use muesli, plain oats, other dried fruit (chopped nuts, cranberries, apricots, dates).  When the box is new, I use all raisins!  With the second half of the box I usually add oats in the middle and add any extra raisins to the sauce.

My cinnamon is in a shaker container, so I am not sure exactly how much I use per apple, just sprinkle a fine sprinkle in, just enough to add some taste.

I'd already smelt the spice and seen us enjoying them, now I had to get home and put them in the slow cooker!

Slow Cooker Apple Recipes | Crock Pot Baked Apples

 Cooks on low in 4 hours

6 blemish free, perfect Granny Smith apples (washed and cored)
1/2 a 375g box of Sunbeam Australian Raisins
approximately 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 tspn nutmeg
approximately 1/8 cup sugar
Water

• Wash and core you apples - don't dry them.
• Squash 4-6 raisins together to make a plug for the base of the apple, to stop the filling falling out when you lift the apples out once cooked.
• Add a few more to fill to half way, then sprinkle in a tiny amount (1/4 teaspoon) of sugar and a sprinkle or cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg.
• Fill up with raisins and add to the slow cooker base.
• Sprinkle a similar quantity of cinnamon and sugar over the top of the apples - the droplets of water will catch the cinnamon and give it a nice appearance of a dusting of cinnamon.
• Add 1/2 - 1 tspn cinnamon to the slow cooker base, plus a couple of teaspoons of sugar and then add cold water to a depth of almost a centimeter.   If you are feeling generous, add more raisins to the water too.  This creates a nice sauce to spoon over each apple when serving.  
• The reason there is no butter in my recipe is we like to eat the apples hot when they are first made, and the leftovers, we eat cold.  In my opinion, the butter congeals in a completely unpleasant way in the sauce and on the cold apples, and makes a healthy dish... not so healthy.  For us it's all about the apples, raisins and spice.
• Turn your slow cooker on, switch to low and cook for 4 hours.
• Enjoy with greek yoghurt and a swirl of honey, or custard or icecream - or just as they are with a couple of spoons of sauce poured over the top.  Delicious - enjoy!

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