Cooking with My Grandma: Apple Brown Betty

Since I’m new to this whole “hobby” thing, I think that my posting on the site in the area of “Cooking with My Grandma” will probably only be once a week.  With life being so fast paced, travel for Artios, and two grandbabies coming, I think once a week is something I can be consistent in.

SO today, I’m baking Apple Brown Betty.  It looked easy, quick and had ingredients that almost everyone has on time all the time.  I hadn’t really heard of this dessert before seeing it in my great-grandmother’s handwriting on a piece of paper.  So, I looked up a bit of history of the dish  on delish.com. Although the history was still a big vague, the recipe appears to have been around for quite some time.

All I needed for ingredients were:

APPLE BROWN BETTY

5 Granny Smith or Gala Apples

4 cups of dried bread crumbs/cubes (I chopped up white sandwich bread into small cubes)

1 cup of brown sugar

1/2 cup butter – melted

1/2 cup lukewarm water

1 tsp. cinnamon (I always add more than listed)

1/2 tsp. salt

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First thing I did was chop up the bread so that it could dry out some while I was doing the rest of the dish. Here in Colorado, things dry out quickly so I didn’t have to wait long.

I then used my apple corer to core and slice the apples and then chopped and diced them up with the peel on. This recipe said to leave the peels on, so I did!

I melted a stick of butter in the microwave for about 40 seconds and then poured it over the bread crumbs that I had drying in a bowl.

I also added the brown sugar, salt and cinnamon to the apples that I had sitting in a separate bowl and mixed all of them together.

In a 2 quart baking dish, I put a layer of apple mixture, followed by a layer of bread crumbs and repeated this until the dish was full.  Then, I poured the 1/2 cup of lukewarm water over the entire dish.

Then I slid it into a 350 degree preheated oven and set the timer for 40 minutes.

It was easy, inexpensive.  I have a feeling my great-grandmother probably did made this recipe quite often given how frugal it is.