Baked Apple Dumplings with Bourbon Caramel Sauce..

Now let me warn you – these are amazing and addicting and absolutely FABULOUS. I made them on a whim a few months back and my family gobbled them up. I have made them several times since. They are so fabulous – great for a dinner party 🙂

Baked Apple Dumpling with Bourbon Caramel Sauce

Cream Cheese dough:
2 ¼ cups flour
3 Tbs sugar
½ tsp salt
4 oz cream cheese, cut into large chunks
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
3 Tbs water

Apple:

½ cup pecans
6 Tbs unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ tsp orange zest
½ tsp plus 2 tsp cinnamon
6 firm sweet apples, such as Golden delicious or Gala
1 egg white
¼ cup sugar

Bourbon Caramel Sauce
½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup sour cream
1 cup sugar
¼ cup water
2 Tbs light corn syrup
2 Tbs bourbon

Preparation:

Cream cheese dough:

In a food processor, pulse flour, sugar and salt. Add cream cheese and pulse 5-10 times, until incorporated. Add butter and pulse 15 times, until sandy and lumpy. Add water and pulse 20-30 times, until the dough comes together. Form the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Apple:

In a dry skillet, toast pecans for 8-10 minutes. Remove nuts from heat, chop and stir together with butter, brown sugar, zest and ½ tsp cinnamon.

Trim off bottom of each apple (small amount), so sit sits flat. Then cut it across the equator, leaving about 2/3 of the apple on the base and maintaining a good size top. Peel only the bottom half of each apple, and remove core and seeds from both halves with a melon scoop. Fill bottom cavities with pecan mixture.

Divide cream cheese into 6 pieces. Roll each into a circle, and wrap around the bottom half of the apple, folding and crimping as needed to enclose fruit entirely. Replace the top of the apple. Secure with toothpicks if necessary.

Beat egg white with a fork until foamy. Mix sugar and remaining cinnamon and spread out on a plate. Use a brush to paint egg white over the sides of the dough, then roll apples in the cinnamon sugar. Freeze for 45 minutes.

Adjust oven rack to center. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a sheet with parchment paper and coat with nonstick spray.

Bake apples for 35 minutes, until the dough is toasty brown. Remove to a cooling rack to rest for 10 minutes. Discard toothpicks and serve with warm bourbon caramel sauce.

Bourbon Caramel sauce:

Whisk together creams, and warm in a small saucepan. In another pan, combine sugar, water and corn syrup. Boil, without stirring, until mixture turns a light amber. Carefully whisk in bourbon. Whisk in cream mixture and remove from heat. Transfer to a boat or pitcher and allow to cool slightly and thicken.