Monday, August 17, 2009

Apple Pie a la Mode Parfaits

These delicious individual desserts are a lot easier than making a real apple pie!

In a saucepan, combine 2 and 1/4 cups peeled and chopped apple (Braeburn works nicely, or any other variety that's good for baking in apple pie), 1/4 cup raw sugar, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice and 1/2 tsp. apple-pie spice.

Bring the mixture to a boil (don't forget: the fruit and the sugar will soon yield liquid, which is what is going to boil, even though there isn't liquid in the saucepan as you place it over the burner), then cover, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Uncover and simmer for an additional 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, then spoon into a bowl; cover and chill.

When it's time to assemble the parfaits, spoon 1 tablespoon crumbled oatmeal raisin cookie crumbs into the bottom of 4 (8-ounce) glasses. Ironically, I used the No Oats "Oatmeal" cookies from Enjoy Life Foods, which are certified vegan on the box: www.enjoylifefoods.com. They contain no oats because they are gluten free, but I often find when buying baked goods that the options for a vegan and those for people with gluten allergies overlap. Either way, the taste was right, which served my purposes!

Top the cookie crumbs with 1/4 cup apple mixture and 3 tablespoons vanilla soy ice cream (such as Turtle Mountain's fruit-sweetened Vanilla), in each glass. Repeat the layers once, ending with the soy ice cream on top.

Due to the soy ice cream, of course, these are best served immediately. Each parfait is 290 calories.

Note: if you can't find or don't want to buy apple-pie spice, it's simply a convenient pre-made mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, so you could use about 1/4 tsp. of each of those instead.

Second note: two things in this recipe perplexed me. A) The ingredient list originally called for 1 and 1/2 cups crumbled oatmeal raisin cookies - it said that would be 2 ounces of cookies, but required 6 ounces! Then, when I assembled the parfaits, and saw that only 2 tablespoons of crumbs were needed per parfait, I only needed to use 1/2 a cup of my crumbles (which was 2 ounces). I am not sure which is in error - the ingredient list, or the assembly instructions. I went with the assembly instructions, but if you want more cookie per parfait, then add 3 tablespoons of oatmeal crumbs instead of only 1.

B) Although the recipe called for 1/2 cup total of apple mixture per parfait, that doesn't intuitively make sense. The recipe starts with just over 2 cups of apples, but obviously those condense down a bit during cooking, so 1/2 cup per parfait is quite simply not what you have to work with... As I layered the parfaits, I used just shy of 1/4 cup of apple mixture each place that was called for.

Cost:
Braeburn apple $2.43
apple-pie spice $5.19
oatmeal cookies $3.79
vanilla soy ice cream $5.99

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