ngredients
6 medium firm apples — Honeycrisp, Gala, or Granny Smith
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
6 tablespoons packed brown sugar, light or dark (I sometimes add a little extra, I won’t pretend otherwise)
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ cup raisins or chopped walnuts — roughly 2 teaspoons per apple, eyeballed
How to make them
Tear off six pieces of heavy-duty foil, each one big enough to wrap an apple with a few extra inches to pinch closed at the top. If you’re working with regular foil, double it up — I once used a single thin sheet and the packet split open halfway through cooking and the butter pooled at the bottom of my Slow Cooker and burned just enough to be annoying. Heavy-duty is worth buying a box of.
Core each apple from the top down, stopping before you go all the way through. You’re making a well for the filling, not a tunnel. If the bottom opens up, everything good drains straight out. I use a melon baller for this because my apple corer has been missing since approximately 2017 and at this point I’ve stopped looking.
Stir the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon together until you have a thick paste — it’ll be sandy and a little crumbly, which is exactly right. Stand each apple on a sheet of foil, spoon the filling down into the core, tuck in your raisins or nuts, then add whatever butter mixture is left on top. Bring the foil up around the apple and pinch it firmly at the top. Snug, not crushed. You’re making a sealed packet so the steam stays inside and does the cooking.
Stand them upright in the Slow Cooker, close enough together that they lean on each other a little. Don’t add water to the bottom — you don’t need it and it makes everything soggy. Put the lid on.
Cook on LOW for three and a half to four and a half hours. I know that’s a wide window and I’m sorry, but it genuinely depends on your apples and your slow cooker. My current one runs a little hot; my old one ran cold; I’ve had the same recipe take three hours in one and five in another. Start checking around three hours by pressing a knife through the foil — it should meet some resistance but go through without much force. Tender but not collapsed.
When they’re done, turn off the slow cooker and leave the lid ajar for ten minutes before you open any packets. The juice inside is extremely hot — I’m not being dramatic — and if you tear into the foil immediately it will steam your hand and spill everywhere. Open them away from your face. Peel the foil back slowly. This is the moment that got my daughter to start calling them treasure apples, and I think about that every single time.
Ways to change it up
If you’re serving these to adults and you have a bottle of bourbon open, add about a teaspoon to each apple before wrapping. It kind of disappears into the filling during cooking but leaves a quiet warmth underneath everything that’s really lovely on a cold Night. Apple brandy does the same thing if that’s what you’ve got.
Maple syrup instead of brown sugar is a version I’ve tried a few times and liked — drizzle it over the butter in each apple, maybe two teaspoons per. Less sweet, a little more complex, slightly thinner syrup. It’s a good variation if the brown sugar version starts feeling too rich.
A pinch of nutmeg in the butter mixture is nice. Just a pinch. I’ve also done cardamom once — just a small amount — which sounds fussy but was actually really good, though I’ve never been able to get it quite right again so maybe it was an accident.
If you want to cut back on butter, you can use three tablespoons total spread across all six apples instead of one per apple. The filling will be drier, less saucy. Still fragrant and good, just more modest. I make them that way sometimes when we’ve already had a heavy dinner and I don’t want anyone to feel like they need to unbutton something.
Leftovers
Leave them in their foil packets in the fridge — it sounds lazy but it’s actually the right call, keeps the apple from drying out and the juices contained. Good for two, maybe three days. Reheat in a low oven or back in the slow cooker.
The syrup that collects at the bottom of the foil is honestly the best part of leftovers — spoon it over oatmeal the next morning. I started doing this by accident once when I had half a packet left over and didn’t want to waste it, and now I sometimes make these specifically so I’ll have that syrup for breakfast the next day, which probably says something about me.
Serve them in shallow bowls so the syrup has somewhere to go. Ice cream if you want it to feel special. Whipped cream from a can is perfectly acceptable and I won’t hear otherwise. Or just a spoon and ten minutes of sitting quietly at the kitchen table before the evening gets away from you.
