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Recipe for Amish Apple Dumplings

Recipe for Amish Apple Dumplings


When you have baskets of apples fresh from local farms just waiting, maybe even begging, to be used, you need to turn to this recipe for Amish apple dumplings! My neighbors are awesome. Anyway, a friend had mentioned that she had made a few and eaten one for breakfast. That sounded like something I needed to do as well. Now, I can count on one hand the number of times on one hand when I had eaten an apple dumpling. I know, that’s very sad–and surprising.

But I decided to hunt down a recipe that would make a flaky, soft, and delicious dumpling. I wanted the one recipe to rule them all. Oh yeah, did I mention I found it? If I had had apple dumplings that tasted like these all those other times, you can bet I would have turned almost fanatic about them. I like these more than apple pie! MORE THAN APPLE PIE! Let’s let that sink in for a moment. What’s more–our ten year old, Kid #1, agrees (and apple pie has always been his favorite thing). It’s the flakiness, I tell ya.

Recipe for Amish Apple Dumplings

I have already made them two days in a row. There are only six in a batch so it won’t produce an overwhelming number. They are so good that when I decided to send some over to the neighbors who gave us the apples in the first place, I almost had mutiny on my hands! No one wanted to share! I slightly feared for my life but it was the right thing to do. They grudgingly agreed although I was a bit nervous sending Kid #1 off with the plate of them!

I do know that I am not a fan of really soggy things. If the soggy underside of a dumpling is your thing, then add the sauce to the beginning of the baking time. If you prefer a dumpling that isn’t soggy on its underside, then hold off. Bake the dumpling for 25 minutes. Pour in the sauce and bake for 15 minutes longer. You can then serve it with some of the leftover sauce. I prefer it as is but my husband likes that extra bit of sauciness.

A delicious #recipe for #Amish Apple Dumplings! Click To Tweet

This is a really simple recipe. I guess that is kind of what you expect when baking like the Amish, though, right? Although I often find Amish recipes to be lacking a little something, in this case, it is perfection. Unlike some apple dumpling recipes that use white sugar, this recipe uses brown sugar. You won’t find Mountain Dew or store-bought crescent rolls in this recipe either. This is a real homemade apple dumpling recipe. It’s so easy, you won’t even believe it.

My husband got to work washing the apples while our sons handled the apple peeler, corer, and slicer. Now that is a brilliant contraption! My husband remarked that it was probably the same design for the last hundred years because it is so simple. This is very similar to the apple peeler we have (affiliate link) Johnny Apple Peeler by VICTORIO VKP1010, Suction Base. It’s an easy way to peel a lot of apples in a short amount of time.

Brief History of Apple Dumplings

Did you know that the dough for dumplings would have been prepared with whatever grain or vegetable (think potatoes) was lying around? It would have complemented the area where the people resided. That’s a lot of different combinations! Food writer Alan Davidson (1924-2003), the author of the massive (affiliate link, clicking means I get a tiny kick-back–read my post about how I use Amazon to shop small) The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford Companions) shared that dumplings appeared in print at the start of the 17th century–which is a pretty sure sign that they have been around a lot longer than that!

“A man may build a complicated piece of mechanism, or pilot a steamboat, but not more than five out of ten know how the apple got into the dumpling.” Edward A. Boyden

Dumplings can be steamed, fried, boiled, or baked. In Britain, according to Information Britain, dumplings were a way to hide the fact that they didn’t really contain a whole lot of meat. It was a way to keep people from being hungry (and probably dissatisfied) during the meat course. In the US, we seem to have a history of doing it all. We filled them, we leave them unfilled and we boiled them. We use them in desserts and main course meals. But that should be expected for a country with so many kinds of people all living together.

Thanks to this amazing recipe for Amish apple dumplings, it will now be a frequent part of our recipe rotation too. Breakfast, dessert, or a nice snack, it’s really filling! I like it just as it is but you may serve them warm alongside a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Either way, you just can’t go wrong with this one. As a matter of fact, I am warming up the last two from my most recent batch for my husband’s and my lunch, while the kids are at school. What they don’t know won’t hurt them!

I found this recipe on Food.com. The original poster did not make the recipe and didn’t do a good job of sharing where she got it from either. Don’t you just hate that?

More Breakfast Amish Recipes

If you would like to try another great Amish recipe, and I suggest you do, be sure to take a look at my recipe for Amish baked oatmeal. It is amazing! We think of it like a base. We like it just as it is warm from the oven, topped with fresh fruit, or warmed up scalloped apples, and often with a bit of cinnamon baked in. It’s seriously like eating a cookie for breakfast. Our boys request it often during the cooler months.

Seeing the glow of the yellow leaves from our Tulip tree outside, I suppose this marks the start of those cooler months–and the beginning of a delicious recipe to perk everyone up in the morning.

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