Apple Dumplings

This is not my recipe, but is from a popular website that I frequent: The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

I first read this recipe when she posted it last winter and thought it was the strangest thing I had ever seen. 'Mountain Dew and Crescent rolls?' I thought, 'Give me a break!'. One day in August while combing through her archives for some inspiration, I noticed that I had all of the ingredients for this dessert on hand (except the Mountain Dew, I needed to make a special trip to the store for that) and decided to give it a try. I'd half the recipe so if it flopped, which I fully expected it to, it wouldn't be much of a loss.

As soon as I took this out of the oven, I knew I was going to be sorry that I only made a half batch. That, and my kitchen smelled as if it were smack in the middle of a giant apple pie.

This apple dumpling recipe is not at all diet friendly, so if you're on one of those, you'll probably want to pass this by. It is a great alternative to baking a full apple pie and it's a snap to throw together. I can have this in the oven in under ten minutes. The most time consuming part of making this is peeling 2 apples. It's so simple. I'll post the recipe in it's original form and make notes of what I now do differently.

Apple Dumplings

2 Granny Smith apples
2 cans crescent rolls (I use reduced fat)
2 sticks butter (I reduce this to 1.5 sticks)
1 1/2 cups sugar (I reduce this to 1 cup)
1 teaspoons vanilla
cinnamon
1 small can Mountain Dew

Peel and core apples. Cut apples into 8 slices each. Roll each apple slice in a crescent roll. Place in a 9 x 13 buttered pan. Melt butter, then add sugar and barely stir. Add vanilla, stir, and pour over apples. Pour Mountain Dew around the edges of the pan. Sprinkle with cinnamon and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Serve with ice cream, and spoon some of the sweet sauces from the pan over the top.

I've found that 30 minutes is plenty of time to bake this dish. At 40 minutes the top of the rolls have started to brown and become hard. 30 minutes allows the rolls to cook through and the apples to soften just enough. I also sometimes dice a third apple and scatter it around the pan in the liquid.