This Home Plate winning recipe, CranApple Betty, is the finale for a favorite Sunday dinner at the Healy-Gallo house in Murrysville, according to the mother of the house, Elizabeth Healy.
"My family requests this for Sunday dinner quite often," says Healy. "It's an easy meal, especially if the CranApple Betty is made in advance."
The dinner starts with a fruit salad, moves to the entree of pork tenderloins with baked vegetables and a side of mashed potatoes with gravy, all accompanied by fresh-baked bread and topped off with the CranApple Betty.
Making the CranApple Betty is not a major chore, however, according to tester Rae Speelman, a student in the catering and party planning class at Westmoreland County Community College. "This recipe is quick and easy," she says. And, it produces "a tasty mix of tart and sweet flavors."
Healy notes that apple varieties other than McIntosh may be used; but she adds, the recipe comes from her late mother, Gertrude, who always used McIntosh apples. "It really does taste best with McIntosh."
CranApple Betty
Elizabeth Healy, Murrysville
- 3 pounds McIntosh apples
- 1/2 bag whole cranberries
- 1 cup sugar, divided use
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1 cup oatmeal
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup butter
Pare and slice apples. Combine the apples with the cranberries in a 9-by-13-inch dish. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar. Combine remaining 3/4 cup sugar, the flour, oatmeal, spices and salt. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly; sprinkle over cranberry apple mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour until top is brown and apples are tender. Serve warm or cold. Usually doesn't have a chance to cool at our house.
Makes about 12 servings.
About the cook
Elizabeth Healy, 50, is a first-generation American. Her parents, Gertrude O'Grady Healy and John Healy, came to the United States from Ireland in the 1920s and '30s. They settled in Queens, N.Y., where Elizabeth and her four sisters and one brother were born and raised, and where she met her husband, Mike Gallo. In the 1970s, Mike took a job with Westinghouse, and the family has moved for the job several times — three different times to Pennsylvania.
But for the past nine years, this all-American family — Elizabeth and Mike, their five children and the latest addition, Casey, the almost 3-year-old dog — has been settled in the Murry Heights section of Murrysville. The children are Tara, 23; Joey, 20; Melissa, 18; Tim, 15; and Matt, 10. Casey, Matt says, is "part yellow lab, part coyote." (Mom explains that the dog howls like a coyote every time Matt plays the recorder.) The dog was adopted from a woman who had acquired her to be a companion for her seeing-eye dog; Casey, however, was prone to flee and proved too much for the woman.
All of this is a long way from Healy's roots. In 1969, she went to Ireland to see where her mother grew up. "It was a little hut with a thatched roof; and even, still, in 1969, they had no running water."
Healy is not sure exactly how she learned to cook or came to love cooking, but she remembers her mother as an excellent cook and recalls watching her operate in the small family kitchen in Queens. "There wasn't a lot of room in there," Healy remembers. "There were no countertop; she had to make everything on the kitchen table, then clean it off as she went. ... Mummy just threw you in there and said, 'Make cookies.'"
However it happened, Healy learned to cook, and bake, and loves it. "We make a lot of bread in this house," Healy says. Her daughter, Melissa, 18, (whom Mom says is an excellent cook) agrees. They make Teddy Bear bread, Irish soda bread, anise bread, corn bread, focaccia and yeast rolls. Another family favorite is German Puff Pancakes, which Healy describes as a "Yorkshire pudding type mix baked in the oven."
And, Healy's willing to experiment. "Tomorrow we're having a murder-mystery dinner party," she says. She will prepare roast soy chicken, cucumber and romaine salad, Oriental noodles and more in keeping with the game's theme. And, she says, while unfolding her Home Plate apron prize, "My husband can where this tomorrow; he's playing the chef."
