INFOMERCIAL VOICE: Are you a Person Who Doesn't Bake? Do you say "Oh, I don't really like sweets" as a cunning way of avoiding serving dessert to your dinner guests? Does the idea of being asked to make a Thanksgiving dessert give you actual, physical hives?
If that describes you even kind of, then this Apple Pandowdy recipe is for you.
Look, I'm no baker. I mean, I can bake, sure. But I rarely ever do it, partially because most of the "easy desserts" out there, the ones that I can actually make without screwing up, well, come out looking like "easy desserts"—no fireworks, no razzle-dazzle. If I'm going to bake, it doesn't feel worth it unless I get audible *oooooh*s and *ahhhhhhh*s from the people I'm serving it to. Which is why this recipe rules: It's stupid-simple, but looks—and tastes—fancy as hell. Slam. Dunk.
Let's start with the filling. Apples. Brown sugar. Flour. Butter. A little bit of ginger, cinnamon, lemon, and vanilla. THAT'S IT, PEOPLE. Apples, plus a bunch of stuff you already have at home. No buying 11 different expensive spices that you only need a quarter teaspoon of. No baking powder or baking soda, whatever those are. Plus, you just toss all those ingredients together. Seriously: No food processor, no stand mixer, no blender or sous vide machine or whisk. You just toss them all together in a bowl. And you know what? The recipe says to peel the apples before you cut them up into rough chunks, and I didn't even bother to do that and it still turned out perfect. How ya like them apples?! (I hate myself.)
"OK," you must be thinking, "the filling's easy, but the crust must be a pain in the ass to make." WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! It's just store-bought frozen puff pastry!!! If you've never got nasty with frozen puff pastry before, this stuff will change you. It bakes up flakier, and lighter, and butterier than any pie dough you could ever make yourself, like a croissant from literal heaven, and you buy it at the g-d store. It's like having a friend who is a really good professional French baker show up and be like, "Psssssst, take this perfect pastry dough and pretend you made it yourself. I promise I won't tell! Bonjour! Oui oui! Fromage!" and then disappear with a wink.
So yeah: You buy the stuff, let it thaw overnight in the fridge, unfold it and cut it up into a bunch of random (read: artistic) shapes and layer them over top of that apple filling in a basic-ass 13"x9" baking pan. Brush on some butter, sprinkle the whole mess with sugar, and blammo!: that thang is ready for the oven.
30-ish minutes at 425°. This is a good time to go ahead and change your Instagram handle to something like "@born2bake" or "@bakersgonnabakebakebakebakebake" or "@2sweet4u", because otherwise all of your followers will be confused when you, a person who cannot bake, posts a photo of this freaky-beautiful dessert. (You also might as well delete all of your existing photos, too, because they're going to look depressing by comparison.) Drop the oven to 350°, and bake it for another 30-ish minutes. This is a good time to Google "cookbook agent" or "how to make money as a food influencer," because once that post starts racking up the likes and people come out of the woodwork throwing two-book deals and bakeware sponsorship opportunities your way, I would hate to see you get taken advantage of. (The world is a scary place.)
Once the puffed pastry top is perfectly browned and the apple-y business underneath is bubbling, it out and let it cool down a bit—you don't want to burn yourself. (Great time to 'Gram.) When it comes time to eat your pandowdy, you'll notice several awesome things about it. For one, that apple filling, which looked so unassuming in the bowl earlier, now appears to be swimming in caramel sauce. I don't know why that happens, but I've never made caramel, and I bet you haven't either, and now you have unwittingly made another delicious dessert thing that only people who actually make dessert make. You will also notice that the crispy, flaky, sugary shards of puff pasty all over the top can just be peeled off and used to scoop up the sweet caramel-y apple stuff underneath. (Dessert chips and dip!! NOBODY IS DOING THAT!!! Put THAT in your MF book!!!!) This is actually the preferred way to eat Apple Pandowdy, according to me.
In the off chance that you have the self control necessary to not peel off the entire top crust and eat it before you can serve the thing to other human beings, this is a great dessert to bring over to someone else's house. All you have to do when you get there is warm it up in the oven for a few minutes, pull it out, and watch everyone lose it. Look at you, Person Who Doesn't Bake. Look at you now.
Easy Thanksgiving dessert bliss awaits, get the recipe:
