Thanksgiving is quickly approaching and last minute my family decides to have dinner at home.

Go figure, right? Well, I just finished throwing together a quick Turkey Day menu.

A few things that are new to the menu this year: an amazing looking butternut squash salad & sausage stuffing from Brown Eyed Baker. Michelle has a vast collection of Thanksgiving related recipes, it’s a great place to go for recipe inspiration!

I also decided on apple dumplings, inspired by one of my classes.

Although these apple pies didn’t make the cut, they are a delicious fall time dessert. The classic apple and caramel combination makes for an extra special treat. Pair with a little vanilla ice cream and you have a masterpiece.

I originally made these pies, along with a bunch of other pies, for a friend of the family.

Of all the pies I made that weekend, the apple pies turned out the best.  Granted it took me a few tries….but I finally got it.

I found that pre-baking a mixture of apples, a little sugar and cinnamon for about 20 minutes made them release enough of their juices so that the crust didn’t puff too much.

By the way, thank you to my awesome Twitter followers for helping me solve this problem! I can always count on Twitter for a quick and helpful response.

Next time I made this recipe I plan on adding more caramel. Yes, more caramel.

I kind of made this one up as I went and didn’t think it through very well. I only added a layer of caramel to the top of the apples, when really it needs to be layered in 2 to 3 different parts of the pie. [Read more...]