It's World Baking Day

Okay, I admit this is a lame, fake "holiday," (hilariously) sponsored by a lame, fake dairy product (Country Crock, if you're curious). But I'll take any excuse to stock the house with sweets!

So very sweet

In this case, I was looking at the remnants of a 3-pound bag of gala apples. I fried up a few to go with some pork chops a week or so back, and I was getting desperate for ways to use up the rest. The problem is, they aren't very tasty on their own -- call it a cautionary tale about out-of-season impulse buys.

Lucky for me, I found a super-simple recipe for apple oatmeal crisp. Bonus: I had some oats in the cupboard that needed using up too.

The Ingredients

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 3 cups apples - peeled, cored and chopped
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 

Double bonus: no grocery run necessary

So I wasn't kidding about super-simple, especially when you account for one of my favorite kitchen tools:

Bloomin' apple

I ended up using four of these little guys, after cutting away the bruised and otherwise yucky bits. I didn't bother peeling them, and it didn't hurt the finished product at all. (I basically never peel apples. I kind of dig the added texture from the skins.)

So now, dump the first four ingredients into a bowl and stir.

Your dishwasher will thank you!

Half of that gooey goodness goes into the bottom of a buttered 8" pan. Then a layer of apples. I tried to put them in there all pretty and photogenic too. Hahahahahaha, yeah, that failed.

Next comes the white sugar. I only used about a quarter cup though. And even at that, it was starting to look like Al Pacino's desk at the end of Scarface. I did want to taste some apple, after all. Then cinnamon, then the other half of the batter.

Once again, I could almost eat this right now! Patience...

Into a 350 oven for 45 minutes, and here's what comes out.

Could it be? A baking success?

Well almost. There's one clear, egregious oversight visible here, and that's the shameful lack of vanilla ice cream. Guess I'll be running to the grocery store after all.

It'll be worth it.

The verdict: delicious, and I'm not missing the extra sugar even a little. The oats are admittedly kind of weird, a bit of chewy amongst the crispy. It's kind of like an extra gooey apple oatmeal cookie, if I tell the truth.

Gotta go now. That ice cream isn't going to buy itself.

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