Apple Dumplings

  I've been hungry for homemade apple dumplings for a while. So when Tom went to the grocery the other day I had him buy a bag of apples. He came home with one called Pink Lady, one I wasn't familiar with.

 They're considered high sugar, high  acid and crisp. This bag was from Bauman Orchards, Inc. in Rittman, Ohio. That's just  west of Akron.

 So, which recipe to use? Because I had a package of ready-made puff pastry dough, all I had to make was the sauce. And Tom bought Wewalka Puff Pastry once before  and used it in a recipe and was very happy with it. We picked up another package when we were at Meijer.

 Pre-made dough is not something I've used before. Some recipes call for crescent roll dough in a tube but that's hardly what I needed. The Wewalka puff pastry dough comes in a single 9x14" sheet rolled inside of parchment paper and can be cut to any size. It's made in Hungary and found in the refrigerator section.

 The only problem is getting enough dough to cover six decent-sized apples. I'll save you the trouble: it won't. Not quite. But that doesn't matter to me. The layering of the finished dough is actually much nicer than the dough I made myself.

 So I cored six apples and pared them.

 I filled the open core with a mixture of granulated sugar (about 1/2 cup) and a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

 I baked them for a little over 40 minutes at 375° in a bath of syrup (see below).

 They came out beautifully and without all the usual work of making my own dough.

Syrup:

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups water
1/4 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Cook the mixture 10 minutes or so until the sugar is completely incorporated. I poured it onto the apples while almost boiling hot.

* Note: After eating a couple of dumplings I think this sauce makes too much and is too watery. The next time I make it I'm going to cut the water in half.

Dessert is taken care of for three days.