When I was just an apple-cheeked boy, I like to climb to the top of the immense McIntosh apple tree that stood beside our house. At that age, my favorite recipe was my mother’s baked apples. She filled them with brown sugar and fresh salted butter and placed them in a glass baking dish. Then she topped them with a little whipped cream that melted down over them.

Later I developed a version of baked apples in which I filled the centers of Redcort apples with a sugar syrup and mixture of spices. I called it “apple in a caramel spice cage.”

This recipe isn’t my mother’s recipe… this is something else. It’s a bit of my childhood seasoned with my own tastes and travels.

1. Make a syrup with sugar, butter, apple juice and spices.
2. Core the apple without cutting through the bottom; make some shallow cuts in the skin to keep it from bursting when baked.
3. Brush the apple, inside and out, with the syrup and pour it into the cavity. Wrap in aluminum foil and bake in a 180°C / 350°F oven for about 20 minutes.