Apple Cobbler with Sweet Biscuits

 

I’m officially done with summer- bring on the Fall weather.

You can keep your pumpkin spice everything; give me all the apples. For me, nothing screams Fall quite like fresh apples.

Since I have Fall on the mind, I wanted to try my hand at a very Fall-oriented recipe. And my friends, it’s a great one.

I present to you: a healthier spin on Apple Cobbler, topped with incredibly easy sweet biscuits!

A traditional apple cobbler is topped with a biscuit-style crust on top, but we’re going to make it even easier on ourselves by baking biscuits right on top of our apple cobbler in the same skillet.

I’m not sure if you would consider the star of this dish the apple cobbler filling or the sweet biscuits, but if you ask me, they both deserve high praise.

The sweet biscuits are taken from my Pretzel Biscuits recipe, with a few slight differences to make them even more delicious and flakier.

I can’t take all the credit, though. I feel like with every single recipe lately I reference Mason Woodruff, but that’s because it is well-deserved. Mason’s recipes have all been amazing and they continuously inspire me! I referenced his Greek Yogurt Biscuits recipe to adapt the original pretzel biscuits I created, so I want to give him all the credit he deserves for that one. He’s a genius.

 

Making The Biscuits

These biscuits do not contain many ingredients at all- it’s the preparation that makes them what they are. As far as ingredients go, here is what you’ll need:

• Self-Rising Flour: All-purpose flour also works just fine here! I like self-rising flour because it helps make things even easier since it’s just all-purpose flour that has been pre-mixed with salt and baking powder. Don’t worry, I added instructions for using all-purpose flour in the recipe card.
• Light Butter: For this one, I used “Blue Bonnet” brand, which is 40 Calories per tablespoon, vs regular butter that is 100 Calories per tablespoon. It’s not a huge difference on the surface, but since we’re using 6 tablespoons total for this recipe, it’ll save us 360 calories for the recipe! Light butter is a soft butter spread that has oil added to it to lighten it up. You can use regular butter or coconut oil (both will work even better than light butter, but again, add more calories) but it’s important to keep some form of butter in the recipe! You won’t be able to swap it out for applesauce like you can with some baking recipes.
• Sugar Substitute: To sweeten these biscuits up, we’re going to be adding some sugar substitute. You can use regular sugar in its place, but I’ve always used Swerve and really like it. It subs 1:1 with regular sugar and is the closest I’ve been able to find taste-wise to this point.

That’s really all you need for the ingredients. Simple, right? The process is where the layers happen…

Once we mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, we form them into a rectangle(ish) on the counter. The mixture will be loose, but that’s what we want. Since these biscuits are lower in fat, we need to be careful not to overwork the dough.

Then, we slice the dough into 6 pieces, stack them up on top of each other, then press down into a rectangle once more.

Once you slice these into 6 pieces again, you’re going to see some beautiful layers!

Not bad!

As you can see, they’re very delicate and slightly falling apart, but trust me: this is what we want.

If you’re thinking “aren’t biscuits supposed to be round?” you’re not alone. The idea of square biscuits threw me for a loop at first, too.

But keeping them square is SO much easier. If you have a biscuit cutter, you can certainly make circles, but then you’re left with leftover dough that you have to re-work into additional biscuits. With this method, we just slice in 6 pieces and we’re ready to go.

And just check out how nicely the layers work out! I was able to pop the top layer off the biscuit no problem.

Maybe it’s just me, but being able to peel biscuits layer by layer makes them so much more enjoyable!

 

The Apple Cobbler Filling

For a typical apple cobbler or apple pie filling, you basically cook down butter, sugar, and apples. It’s insanely delicious, but needless to say, not the lowest in calories.

We’re going to do a few things to change that:

1. Replacing some of the butter with unsweetened applesauce and sugar-free syrup. The applesauce will not only add liquid we need, but crank up the apple flavor even more! Using sugar-free syrup also helps with the overall flavor, but any liquid sweetener will work great! I used a maple syrup, but feel free to use whatever you’d like. I’m sure honey would be delicious too.
2. Adding in half a scoop of vanilla protein powder. You can omit this if you’d like, but I found it to really help. It adds a subtle vanilla flavor, and also helps to thicken up the sauce a bit once cooked. I made this recipe for my wife, who hates the taste of protein powder, and didn’t mention to her that there was protein powder in this. I can assure you that she didn’t notice! It’s a very small amount, but the little bit goes a long way.

All you’re going to need to do is mix everything together and let it cook down in a skillet for 10 minutes! It will reduce and thicken slightly, then you’ll add your biscuits on top and bake. The apples will cook down perfectly once baked!

 

Determining a Serving Size

Very often I get the question of how you measure out a serving size for recipes like this?

I’ll be honest with you: I’m not strict about it, and I don’t measure exactly.

What I do is enter all my ingredients into MyFitnessPal, then just simply divide by the amount of servings (in this case, 6). When dishing this out, I just scoop out one biscuit with the apple cobbler mixture it’s sitting on top of.

It may not be exact, but you’ll be pretty close!

 

If you love these, make sure you check out the pretzel biscuits recipe, which make the perfect buns for breakfast sandwiches!

And if you want some more Fall inspired recipes, I’ve got a few for ya:

• Apple Cider Donuts
• Caramel Apple Cookie Butter Bowl
• Super Soft Pumpkin Cookies

 

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