Domino's CinnaStix Apple Crisp Recipe

This is the final course in our fast food Thanksgiving feast. The centerpiece is a Popeye’s Cajun turkey, but we took classic dishes from fast food restaurants to make four phenomenal side dishes. Stuffing from Popeye’s biscuits, a cheesy potato gratin with McDonald’s hash browns, and creamed corn with Chipotle corn salsa.

And finally, this combination of apples and cinnamon is a classic for a reason. It delivers the comforting warmth of toasty autumnal spices and the hearty sweetness of still-tart apples. To fast foodify the dessert, we turned to Domino's CinnaStix: a bready, pizza dough byproduct topped with cinnamon and sugar and accompanied by a small well of sticky-sweet icing for optimal dunkage. It just took some tinkering with Max's apple crisp recipe to balance the sweetness of a CinnaStix topping with a base of tart, boozy apples.

For this rendition, rich turbinado sugar is combined with flour, butter, spices, and chopped CinnaStix with their icing, while apples marinate in cornstarch for viscosity, and brown booze. Scotch provides a nice, smoky contrast to the profound sweetness of seasonal apples and commercial high fructose corn syrup, but we tried it out with bourbon as well, and it was similarly superb (rum or rye would be great options too). And the otherwise gluey icing actually helps the topping come together and form a solid crust on the apples.

I baked the whole mess together until the topping was browned and beginning to harden. The CinnaStix crisped up into sweet croutons that provided a perfect contrast to the luscious, almost caramelized apples beneath. This may not be the traditional Thanksgiving apple crisp you've put up in years past, but it will certainly be a conversation piece—how on earth did you get marvelously crispy topping on those perfectly cooked apples?? Just think twice before revealing your secret ingredient...