Apple Brown Betty For Lunch

    You may recall me mentioning the fact that my family just went apple picking on Sunday.  We picked 20 pounds of beautiful red Mcintosh and Empire apples.  It is tradition that on the evening we pick apples I make a brown betty.  History has taught me that one brown betty is never enough.  I made two big apple brown bettys and a batch of homemade vanilla ice-cream to go with it.  

    While I was making my brown betty I thought that I should pack the kids a bit of brown betty for their lunch dessert.  The problem is that it always looks so pretty in the casserole dish, but loses that pretty when it's dished out in a bowl, or lunch container.  I wondered how I could pack the kid's brown betty, but keep as much of the sweet, crusty top intact.  That was when I had my big idea.  I don't want to sound too full of myself, but I feel safe in calling myself a genius on this one.  O.K., genius may be stretching, but I have to say it's pretty clever.  I made apple brown betty in my muffin tins.  They are the perfect size for my new favourite ziploc lunch storage containers.

    It only took two apples to make 6 mini apple brown bettys.  I cut them extra small to fit them into the cupcake papers.  

    I then topped the sliced apples with my brown betty mix (1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 tsp of salt).  I baked them for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. 

Oh they looked pretty and smelled even prettier after they were finished.

    It's funny when I cracked open my cookbook.  You can easily tell my family's favourite recipes without even having to ask.  Just look through my cookbooks.  The pages that are pristine, are not our favourites.  It's the ones that are barely legible, covered in grease marks, and food splatter.  

    At the end of the night I had packed 4 lunches.  The brown bettys were the perfect size for the compartment, easy peasy.