CHARLOTTE’S BAKED APPLES

an additional 2 cups cider or juice (or other liquid; see below)

1. Preheat the oven, anywhere from 250 to 400 (depending on if you’re baking something else that is pickier about temperature at the same time). Oil the baking dish, and set it aside.

2. Core the apples, using a small, sharp paring knife. Start at the stem end, circling with the knife, working your way down in a cone-shape, scraping out the seeds and the tough seed fiber. Then flip and begin at the blossom end, repeating until you come to the middle. Then turn the knife around in the middle to scrape out any more seed-and-seed-case detritus and to make a nice, not-too-big tunnel right down the middle of the apple. Place each apple in the prepared baking dish.

3. Poke three cloves, pointed side down, equidistant from each other around the top of each apple, piercing the peel. Then jab in a stick of cinnamon into the top of the apple, leaving it standing upright (if you have the hard kind of cinnamon, just go head and stick the cinnamon in the hollow of each apple’s core). Push a piece of the lemon, with its rind, into the cored centers. Top the lemon with the brown sugar or other sweetener, and finish with the teaspoon of butter or vegan butter.

4. Combine the cider and vanilla, and pour this over the apples. Stick the apple-filled baking dish in the oven.

5. Check on the apples at 20 minutes to baste them. Check again at 35 minutes, and if you like, spoon a little more of the apple cider over them. The apples won’t be done yet (maybe, if you are baking a firm cooking apple at a lower temperature, nowhere close to done). But from here on out, check them every 15 minutes or so, basting with the apple juice. There are many variables here — the size and variety of the apples, the temperature you chose. If you are an inexperienced cook and feel uneasy about lack of guidance, then go ahead and use medium large apples, bake at 350, and allow for 45 to 55 minutes.

6. Test the apples for doneness, inserting the tip of a knife if necessary — you want them completely, meltingly tender heat on the inside and almost collapsed in on themselves, pleasantly shriveled on the outside. Serve, warm or chilled, with a little of the baking liquid spooned over each. Or, reserve the baking liquid to make the glaze, below.

7. GLAZE: transfer the baking liquid to a heavy-duty medium saute pan coated in non-stick covering, and add the additional cider or juice. Bring to a boil over medium high heat — it will bubble — and stay close at hand. You are trying to cook the juice down to a syrup about the consistency, when finished and cooled, of thin honey. Keep lifting the pan off the heat every few minutes and giving it a swirl to bring down the bubbles so you can see how reduced it’s getting. Cook the syrup down til it is about the thickness of maple syrup (it will get thicker as it cools; better to remove it to early than to let it burn). Divide the glaze over each apple.