Once again I found myself with an abundance of apples and no idea how to use them up fast enough. The last time this happened I made a crumble type thing, but I wanted to try something else this time. I wanted something like an apple pie, but without feeling as overwhelming to eat (to me) as a piece of pie, so I did some googling and found a bread maker recipe that would make a cinnamon roll dough for me and then all I had to do was make the filling! As always, if you need specific measurements, this probably isn’t the recipe for you.
I started by peeling and cutting up the apples and tossing them into a pot with some melted butter. I also juiced about 6 cuties for some orange juice right into it and let it start cooking down a bit. When everything started getting soft I added some spices based on how I was feeling. This ended up being pumpkin pie spice, powdered vanilla, a few small dashes of powdered clove, a few splashes of vanilla, and a dash of cracked pepper. At one point a salted caramel made it in there too. As the liquid boiled off I topped it off with either apple juice or water to keep my apples from burning.
After the apples made their way into the buttered pan is when I started the dough in the maker. Two hours later the dough was ready but I didn’t feel like the apples were ready yet so it hung out in the maker for a bit while I waited for them to even out their timing a bit.
I wanted to try two different flavor profiles when I rolled them, because I have a thing for things that are both sweet and spicy, so before I rolled out the dough I split it in half. The basics were the same across both rolls: melted butter mixed with brown sugar spread across first, sprinkled with more pumpkin pie spice and a cookie crumble spice thing I have, and then mashed apples. With one I also added a sprinkling of spicy salt before I rolled it up. Sliced it with a pizza cutter because that’s what I had on hand, and let them sit for about 45 minutes in a slightly warmed oven to finish rising.
They baked for about 25 minutes and oh. My. Goodness. The apple filling was definitely worth the amount of time it took to cook down. 10/10 would make the filling again. I liked it better piled in with extra dough that didn’t line up with the rolls rather than in an actual roll form, but I quite enjoyed all the forms that had that tasty tasty apple goodness in it.
