Okay, you guys. It’s apple pie time.
Oh wait, I mean apple bar time. These are Buttery Apple Squares!
AuthorRetroRuth
- From Kay Kellogg's Nonfat Dry Milk Recipes
[cooked-sharing]
Sift together flour, salt, and nonfat dry milk powder; mix with cornflake crumbs
Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Combine egg and water; add to crumb mixture, stirring only until combined
Pat half of the dough into an ungreased 13x9 pan. Cover with sliced apples. Combine sugar and flour (and 1 tsp cinnamon, if desired); sprinkle over apples. Dot with butter.
On a lightly floured board, roll out the other half of the dough to fit the pan. Place over apples.
Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes or until apples are tender.
While still warm, frosting with confectioners sugar icing. Cut into squares and serve warm or cold.
Ingredients
Directions
Sift together flour, salt, and nonfat dry milk powder; mix with cornflake crumbs
Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Combine egg and water; add to crumb mixture, stirring only until combined
Pat half of the dough into an ungreased 13x9 pan. Cover with sliced apples. Combine sugar and flour (and 1 tsp cinnamon, if desired); sprinkle over apples. Dot with butter.
On a lightly floured board, roll out the other half of the dough to fit the pan. Place over apples.
Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes or until apples are tender.
While still warm, frosting with confectioners sugar icing. Cut into squares and serve warm or cold.
Notes
These are from a Kellogg’s promo recipe book which looks like it is for schools and institutions to make in a lunchroom sort of situation. But what’s great about this book is that they also give a scaled-down version of the recipes so that you can make them at home, which was a smart move.
I have been hoarding this recipe forever. Until this year, we didn’t discover that we have a wonderful apple orchard very close to us. And their apples are AMAZING! So, I decided to make these bars for Halloween to give out at our neighborhood social-distancing party (Which was freaking COLD. Why are you so cold, Michigan?). Of course, as with any recipe I seem to make during the time of Covid, I didn’t have all of the ingredients I needed. (How can the store be out of cornflakes?)
Side note: If you have a food processor, use it to make the crust! So easy.
I decided to double the recipe to fit in my sheet pan, to add cinnamon AND use Cinnamon Toast Crunch instead of cornflakes. The first two parts of this went just swimmingly, but the toast crunch made the dough really, really sticky. I threw it between some parchment paper to roll it out, but I don’t recommend using Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I was able to pat most of the dough into place, but you can see there is a hideous amount of flour on it.
I actually went onto the Kellogg’s website after I made these, and found that they still use a variation of this recipe! In the recipe on their site, it said to sub Rice Krispies if you don’t have cornflakes. So, you can learn from my error and not end up with super-sticky dough.
But the dough really baked up just fine. If anything, I used really juicy apples, and I think I should have added a bit more flour to the filling. But overall they turned out great. The crust was reasonably sturdy but not too tough. I was able to cut the bars and transfer them into a container to take to the party with no issues.
Pshhh, no, I didn’t just take this picture to show off my Nordicware pan. That would just be…ridiculous.
“Interesting.”
“What, are they bad?”
“No, I like these. They have a really good flavor.”
The Verdict: Very Good Flavor
From The Tasting Notes –
Overall, I would say that these were really good. TJ ran after me for the whole afternoon asking for “apple pie”, so they were a big hit with Tom, the kids, and the party people. The bars did taste a lot like apple pie, and the crust was chewy but good. It had a graham flavor, which made sense since I used a graham cereal. The icing on the top was a must to get that “this is a bar and not pie” flavor, and actually, I ended up adding more icing right before I cut the bars because Alex said that there wasn’t enough icing. I made half the icing with apple cider and powdered sugar, and half with just powdered sugar and milk. The apple cider icing was the clear winner. These were more work than just making apple crisp, or a regular apple pie, but I think if you are in a situation where people have to just grab and don’t have plates or forks these are worth all of the extra effort.
Success!
My grandmother used to make something like this but the filling was thickened apple sauce. I’m going to try this version!
Oh, Michigan. My grandma already had snow. But the bars look great! Thank you for sharing more apple recipes – I tried one from your newsletter a couple of months ago and it was delicious. …I may have to try this one, too. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
These sound yummy — do you have the recipe for them?
Not sure how I missed this one (and the next one). Those apple bars look sooooo good — and I know I would also choose icing made with cider over icing made with milk.