The taste and aroma of baked apples, familiar from childhood, can also be reproduced in a modern way, without using an oven, in a slow cooker. Thanks to this, we will save time spent on cooking, we will have to wash less dishes and we will help our apples to save more vitamins, the content of which, as you know, decreases during heat treatment, which is much less related to cooking in a multicooker.
About the benefits of baked apples
Baked apples in a slow cooker are not only a tasty treat. Oddly enough, but it is in some way even more useful product than fresh apples - it contains more pectin, which helps to improve metabolism in the body, lower blood cholesterol. Such apples have a positive effect on the composition of the blood and normalize the intestines. Apples baked in a slow cooker are softer and contain less acid, which makes it possible to eat them by people who cannot eat fresh apples for some reason (for example, older people, which makes it difficult to bite and chew hard foods). In addition, the benefits of apples can be increased by filling them with a filling of other healthy products.
Recipes
To begin, remember how to cook baked apples in a slow cooker according to a recipe familiar from childhood. After all, baked apples were one of the simplest and most affordable treats. Few people have not tried to cook them yourself. Cooking is simple and fast - available to any housewife. So, take the required number of apples. They need to be washed very carefully, because we will eat them together with the skin. Now we need to remove the core of each apple, making sure that not a single bone is left. It is desirable that the shape of the cut-out space, which will become a capacity for the filling, resembled a cone. Make sure that the cuts are not through - so apples in a slow cooker can lose some of their filler. You can cut each apple in half and remove the core. Then our apples, baked in a slow cooker, will take on a different form - half the apples, and we will reduce the baking time.
Now that the apples are ready, put them in a slow cooker. It is better to lay them so that they fill the entire bottom of the bowl, thereby ensuring stability, in order to be safe from leakage of the filling. Pour a little water into the bottom of the bowl and pour granulated sugar into the center of each apple . He will fulfill the role of filling, soaking the juicy pulp of each fruit, making it very tasty, sugar. That's all. Close the lid, turn on the “Baking” mode for the time required for baking - usually from 7 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the apples.
When cooking baked apples in a slow cooker, one should not forget that, due to the usually sweet content of the filling, you can spoil the taste by making it cloyingly sweet. To avoid this, use more acidic apple varieties.
You can refine a familiar recipe using toppings other than standard (from sugar). In this quality, you can use various jams and fresh berries. Often, honey is placed in the center of the apple instead of sugar. It turns out very tasty and healthy. To give a more interesting taste and aroma, a few minutes before the end of the baking process, each apple on top of honey can be sprinkled with a little ground cinnamon, and when the apples are finally ready, sprinkle with chopped nuts.
Another no less interesting recipe is apples stuffed with cottage cheese and prunes. Prune should be pre-soaked in boiling water for several minutes. Cottage cheese - mix with sugar and cinnamon. You can replace the curd mass. When filling apples with filling, first we put the prunes, and on it the cottage cheese. Bake according to a standard recipe.
Another interesting recipe is baked apples in sour cream sauce. We need: walnuts, honey, sour cream, butter, lemon juice, orange zest. We place two teaspoons of ground walnut in each apple, put a little butter on top, bake. Preparing the sauce: mix a third of a glass of sour cream, about 15 g of honey, a tablespoon of lemon juice, tea - orange zest. When the apples are ready, we take them out of the slow cooker and pour each apple with the prepared sauce. Very tasty!