Beeramel apples

One of the neighborhood beer stores, Downtown Wine & Spirits, has a rather engrossing selection of Belgians to which I've lately succumbed. Malheur and Vuuve and their ilk have begun to affect my ongoing experiments with beer-cooking, particularly my attempts to get rid of apples slightly past their prime.

Apples Caramelized With Beer
Based on Orangette's Roasted Pears which, by the way, work just fine the way the way she does them.

3 apples, preferably medium-sized and a little tart
3 or 4 tablespoons sugar, preferably vanilla sugar
beer, preferably something golden and Belgian
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
Quarter of a lemon
Ice cream (optional), nothing too intense

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Grease a shallow baking dish with some butter. (We recommend something enameled, like a Creuset pie dish or a smallish Dutch oven, because beeramel would be a bitch to scrape off Pyrex. We haven't tried silicone, but that could work, too.) Pour in enough beer to coat the bottom of the dish, and then a couple glugs more.

Peel the apples and halve them. We leave the stems and the cores, but if your aesthetics differ, removing them won't be a problem. Rub the apples all over with the lemon wedge, place them in the dish cut side up, and squeeze a little more lemon juice over them. Dust with sugar. (If you don't have vanilla sugar, straight-up white granulated sugar will do, but this could be an opportunity to experiment with raw sugar or honey.)

Cut remaining butter into bits and distribute over apples.

Cover dish with lid (or parchment paper, or aluminum foil) and place in oven. After 15 minutes, remove lid and flip apples, cut side down. Bake another 45 minutes or so (depending on the size of your fruit and the reliability of your oven; mine tend to be small and fickle, respectively). Basting about every ten minutes (a silicone brush is good here) and adding additional beer if things look prematurely dry. The juices on the bottom of the dish will start out thin, turn a pleasant amber as they thicken, and end up a sticky, deep brown: take it out now.

Serve hot, warm, or room temperature, with ice cream. If it's still hot, you can drizzle the extra caramel over the ice cream, and it'll harden into lovely little tendrils.

This goes pretty well with beer.

Pictured: Apples from the Kollas Orchard in Tolland, Connecticut, caramelized with Witkap-Pater Abbey Triple Ale and served with redundantly apple-y cheesecake. (Thanks, Mom!)