Christian Ridge Pottery The Original AppleBaker Baking Dish Review

The Original AppleBaker Baking Dish by Christian Ridge Pottery seems like a good wedding or shower gift.  At $19.95 a pair (figuring you'll need two pair), some newly wed couple can serve guests individual baked apples in the dishes they were baked in.  Chances are they won't get extras of this gift!  And, with minimal prep, the AppleBaker Baking Dish apples can be nuked on high for 1-1/2 to 3 minutes.  Or can they?

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Always parsimonious and on the look-out for gizmos at thrift shops, I found my first two Original AppleBakers for a dollar each, brand new.  No one looking at them could figure out what they'd do and, to be honest, it took me a while to make an educated guess.

My husband, Pal, was as curious as I.  We looked up the product name on the net and found some scrumptious recipes on the Christian Ridge Pottery site.  Being quick'n'easy types, we decided a few minutes in the microwave beat heating up the oven and cooking the apples at 350' for 40 minutes.

Nuking is quick and easy, but the psychological delight of baked apples seems compromised to me.  Our apples nuke best when they are denuded of their skins before coring and placing each apple on its post, bathing it with a tablespoon each butter and water, then garnishing with nuts, raisins, spices, marshmallows, maple syrup, etc.

When microwave baked as we still do, the apples look pitiful and, along with the garnish, are tough to wrest from the dish.  (We use grapefruit spoons.)  They always take longer than the appointed time to cook, possibly because our apples are too big.

Tough patches aside, right after our first experience, we thought we should have two more AppleBakers.  Soooo conveniently... another brand new pair popped up at a different thift store the next week.  Because we slow learners generally continue to nuke them (ever trying to improve our process) we have never served baked apples to guests.

If you buy The Original AppleBaker for yourself or as a gift, I'd follow the directions for oven baking.  As good as the apples taste either way, your final product will be more traditional and easier to work with and you can keep the poor things dressed in their colorful peels.

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My recommendation of this product is conditional.  You have to be in a mood to experiment, and I find the actual retail price quite high.