If you’re planning to decorate your caramel base chocolate cake with ornamental gumdrops and M&Ms, STAAAP!

How about trying something new this festive season? The cakes and puddings are taking a backseat this Xmas, letting tarts and pies become our fave options.

Good news is, Michelle Obama shared her secret recipe for apple cobbler with Yankee Magazine recently and it’s currently doing the rounds on the internet for all the right reasons.

Now, before we get started with the recipe, let’s go back to the history of apple cobbler. Cobbler refers to a variety of snack consisting of a fruit or savoury filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a batter, biscuit, or dumpling before being baked. It is also known as tart, pie, torte, pandowdy, grunt, slump, buckles, crisp, croustade, bird’s nest pudding or crow’s nest pudding.

Michelle likes her sliced apples tossed with brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. She suggests leaving the mixture overnight so the aroma of the spices blends with the fruit.

Interestingly, it is one of former US President Barack Obama’s favourite desserts. Michelle says, “I’ve been making this cobbler for a long time, so I usually just eyeball how much needs to go in. People might want more or less sugar, but this is how our family and friends like it. This recipe makes one cobbler, which is like a double pie.”

Find the recipe below:

Filling:

Ingredients

8 Granny Smith apples, peeled and sliced [or a bag of frozen peeled apples]

1-1/2 to 2 cups of brown sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup white flour

Instructions

Mix these ingredients together in a bowl and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight so the spice goes all the way through the apples.

Crust:

Ingredients

3 sheets refrigerated pie crust

1 stick of butter

Instructions

• Preheat oven at 325 degrees. Butter and flour the bottom of a large baking dish. Roll out three pie crusts real thin — as thin as possible.
• Layer the bottom of the pan with 1-1/2 of the pie crusts and prick a few holes in it. Pour the apples with the liquid into the pie pan. Dot 3/4 of a stick of butter around the apples. Use the final 1-1/2 pie crusts to cover the apple mixture entirely (let the pie crust overlap the pan).
• Pinch the edges of the dough around the sides of the pan so the mixture is completely covered.
  Melt final 1/4 stick of butter and brush all over top of crust.
• Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees. Bake at 300 for up to 3 hours — that’s what makes the crust flaky, like Barack likes it. Put the cobbler in the oven and go for a walk, go to the store, or do whatever you have to do around the house. Start looking at the cobbler after two and a half hours so it doesn’t burn.
• Serve anytime.