Place peeled and cored apples in a pot or oven-proof casserole or baking dish. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add brown sugar, lemon juice and li-hing powder, stir and simmer briefly, until bubbling and thickened. Pour this syrup over the apples, turning to coat. Bake at 250 degrees, turning and coating apples every 15 to 20 minutes of 45 minutes to 1 hour. While the apples cook, place a pint of good quality vanilla ice cream in the refrigerator for half an hour, to soften slightly. Turn the ice cream out into a bowl and cut in a good quantity of minced crystallized ginger — perhaps 2 tablespoons. Pack into tub or other container and freeze.

Apples are done when they are fork-tender and soft but not falling apart. With a serving spoon, remove each apple from the syrup, allowing excess syrup to drip off. Reserve syrup for use in dessert. Place each apple in the well of a standard-size, straight-sided muffin tin, pressing with back of spoon to flatten and shape; cool. The apple will become a squared-off cylinder. Apples may be held in the refrigerator until use.

To assemble the dessert: In the center of a flat plate, place a round sugar cookie. Top this with the apple. Drizzle one-fifth of the syrup over and around the apple. Top with another cookie. Carefully place a scoop of ginger ice cream on top of the cookie. Cut a notch in the top of the ice cream and place an apple chip upright in the top of the ice cream. Serve immediately.

Makes 5 servings.

VANILLA SABLES (SUGAR COOKIES)

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Briefly beat in egg and vanilla. Beat in flour, mixing until just incorporated. Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap, shaping into a thick rectangle. Chill at least 1 hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. On a lightly floured board, roll out dough to 1/8 inch and cut into rounds. Bake until golden brown, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Makes about 12 to 24 cookies.

APPLE CHIPS

Bring water and sugar to a simmer and add the scraped-out seeds of the vanilla bean. Add apples to syrup and cook until translucent, a few minutes.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Drain and carefully place apples individually in rows on a baking pan lined with nonstick baking mat or cooking parchment. Dry in oven until chewy-crisp — about an hour.

Another homey dessert that Chun prepared in a previous job is perfect for large holiday parties or office potlucks. These rich and tender pineapple-nut bars, more cakelike in texture than cookielike, were a buffet standard at the Waialae Country Club when Chun worked there. This a very easy and forgiving recipe. If you melt the butter and throw all the ingredients in together at once, it will have a coarser, but still moist texture. Standard cake procedure — creaming the room-temperature butter with the sugar, adding eggs one at a time and slowly beating in flour mixture and fruit — produces a finer crumb.

Chun specifies finely chopped but not ground nuts and roughly chopped pineapple chunks rather than crushed. Be sure to drain the pineapple well. Other drained, chopped canned fruit might be substituted. And, of course, the bars would be great served warm with ice cream.

This makes a LOT, perfect for parties.

PINEAPPLE-NUT CAKE BARS

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Spray or grease and flour a 12-by-17-inch jelly roll pan (shallow, rimmed pan). Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking soda; stir in macadamia nuts. Set aside.

Melt butter (or just soften). In bowl or standing mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Gradually add flour-nut mixture. Stir in chopped pine-apple.

Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Place on center shelf of preheated oven. Bake until golden brown, edges pull away slightly from pan, center springs back when gently pressed with a finger and toothpick inserted into the center emerges clean.

Cool on rack and cut into 40 larger squares or 80 thick fingers.

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.