Apple Pie Bars

Happy November! November marks a challenge for us here at PacificThyme. It's NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month. The deal is, you post in your blog every day for the whole month. That is 30 days of PacificThyme that you have coming your way! It will definitely be tough, but we figure that between the two of us, we just might have a shot at this.

This weekend, I went to San Diego to visit my friend Traci, a most awesome soon-to-be-pharmacist. As a pharmacist, Traci is really interested in the chemistry of cooking. Last time I visited her, we tried to make bread without using sugar, to mess with the properties of the yeast. Imagine that!

This time, Traci wanted something sweet. She gave up chocolate for 2009 as a personal challenge (she's crazy, right?!), but has been really successful so far! Not wanting to ruin her goal, we picked something sans chocolate: apple pie bars. The recipe said that it was the lazy girl's apple pie. That is definitely us. Especially when we were gearing up for a fun Halloween night on the town, we needed something easy but super delicious to take to a party. Enter apple pie bars.

Not only do you NOT have to make a fancy pie crust, these bars took only about 30 minutes to make. The hardest part was peeling the apples, and really, how hard is that? If you have 30 minutes, you could be enjoying some really delicious apple pie bars. Ok? Ready set go!

Apple Pie Bars

Adapted from Ellie's New England Kitchen

Crust

• 1 1/4 c. flour
• 1/3 c. packed brown sugar
• 1/2 c. butter, softened
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Filling

• 8 apples, peeled, cored and sliced into thin pieces (we used granny smith)
• 2/3 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. flour
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg

Topping

• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon (we ran out of cinnamon and used 1/4 tsp nutmeg instead)
• 1 box (15 oz) Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts (i know this is cheating, but i warned you that this is the lazy girl's pie!)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 deg F
2. In a large bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon until well blended but still crumbly. I just used a whisk, but you can use an electric mixer if you want to be even lazier! ;)
3. With your fingers, press crust mixture in the bottom of ungreased 13x9-inch pan
4. Combine the filling ingredients (without the apples) in a bowl. Just before you're ready to cover the crust with it the filling, toss the apples with the dry mixture and coat them well.
5. Spread the filling over the crust and bake for 10 minutes.
6. While that bakes, in large bowl, mix sugar and cinnamon.
7. Cut 1 cold unrolled Pillsbury crust lengthwise in half, then cut into 1/4-inch slices.
8. Separate pieces and toss with cinnamon sugar mixture.
9. After the 10 minutes, sprinkle cut-up crust mixture evenly over filling.
10. Bake 18 to 20 minutes more, or until crust is golden brown.

It turned out that we forgot to take the bars to the party, but when we woke up in the morning, they made a delicious breakfast, too! :)

Happy November!

-Erin