The Dessert Martha Stewart Allegedly Made In Her Prison Microwave

About a decade after Martha Stewart did her short stint in a federal prison, I, too, spent time behind bars — as an employee, not an inmate. Most days, I'd eat alongside the inmates in the prison canteen, and while I'll admit it wasn't Michelin star-worthy fare – prisons, in general, need better food – I didn't turn up my nose at it since "free" is the best sauce. As for what Martha Stewart thought about prison food, on the other hand, it seems she did nothing but sneer at what was offered to her. Still, no matter how much she hated it, she may have been willing to smuggle some of it out of the cafeteria to use for her own cooking projects, including the ingredients to make a baked apple.

A baked apple seems like a simple thing for someone of Stewart's culinary pedigree, but cooking in prison housing units is generally frowned upon. She wouldn't have been able to whip up a batch of her fluffy blueberry pancakes with carbonated water, nor would the commissary have sold the Żubrówka vodka she uses for her signature Martha-tinis (or any booze, for that matter, unless one of her fellow inmates brewed a sneaky batch of pruno). Just to cut the apple, she would probably have had to use a flattened can lid as a contraband knife. (That's what my inmates used to do, although I took care not to see any evidence.) With all of the effort required, it's no wonder Stewart only had the energy to top the apple with cinnamon and caramel and zap it in the microwave. Still, it's the thought that counts, and Meg Phipps — the inmate she gifted it to — remembers it fondly to this day.

One thing that was kind of unique about Martha Stewart's time at "Camp Cupcake" is that she may have been the only inmate who didn't do a stint in the kitchen. Kitchen duty was mandatory for all newbies at Alderson Federal Prison Camp (the institution's proper name), but perhaps the fact that Stewart requested it meant that she was instead assigned to scrub the warden's toilet. Even without officially-sanctioned kitchen access, she still managed to cook on several occasions, and that baked apple wasn't the only dish she concocted out of foraged ingredients and improvised kitchen tools.

Stewart has spoken of making jam out of crabapples picked on prison grounds. With enough smuggled sugar, it's possible she somehow managed to do this in a microwave. Corrections1, a news source aimed at corrections professionals, doesn't seem to think this is the case, though. Instead, the outlet speculates that Stewart may have been granted access to the kitchen facilities for her jam making. Other dishes, however, were likely made on the down-low, such as a caramel flan that she brought to a potluck held in honor of her pending release. Meg Phipps, the same inmate who received the baked apple, said she had no idea how Martha managed to make it, but the domestic diva may have been able to MacGyver something out of the pudding cups that are often sold in prison commissaries.