Stuffing (or dressing?) #1

(Before I start, to the title, if you make this and put it into a turkey and bake it, it's called "stuffing." What is it called if you skip the turkey and bake it in a casserole dish? My family always called it "out-of-the-bird stuffing," or just "stuffing," but I've since heard it called "dressing." Is that what everyone calls it, or is that just a southern thing? Either way, that's what this is)

Okay, this isn't really #1, it might be more like #3 or #4, but it's been so long that I can't give specifics of my earlier suffings, with a few exceptions:
1) Ovens are much better than stovetops (which leave it mushy).
2) Bullion instead of stock is terrible.
3) Carrots give a sweet flavor that just doesn't taste good.
4) Good stuffing contains: bread, butter, onions, celery, mushrooms, sage, thyme, and rosemary.

This time, I decided to try adding apple. Here was my recipe:

~2 T chicken fat (strained from stock I had made and left in the fridge)
1 T butter
2 celery stocks, diced
2/3 onion, diced
1/2 granny-smith apple, cut into small-ish pieces (a little bigger than 1 cm cubes, but less than 2cm)
1 1/4 c mushrooms, roughly diced (yes, I measured this, it was like 4 or 5 button mushrooms)
7 slices of stale, semi-decent whole wheat bread (each piece about 2"x4"), cut roughly into 1"-2" squares
chicken/veggie stock
pepper, salt, thyme, sage, rosemary

Melt fat and butter in a frying pan, and sweat the celery and onion. Add salt and pepper. Once the onions begin to become translucent, add apple, mushrooms, and more salt and pepper. Stir for a couple minutes, and add a dash of each herb. Once the mushrooms have released their juices, and most of them have evaporated, add the bread. Toss several times to mix. Then, add a couple ladles of stock, until all of the bread is pretty moist, but not falling apart. Pour the mixture into a bread pan, and bake in a toaster oven at 350F for 25 minutes.

My thoughts: Turned out really great. Next time I might want to cook it at either a lower temperature or for less time, since some of the bread on the top was just on the edge of burning. I might want to use a richer chicken stock (right now the stock I'm using is home-made, basically of the parts of veggies and chickens that I would otherwise throw away; this batch is good, but not rich in chickeny flavor). In terms of the apples, I'm not sure, but I don't think I like them. They kind of contrast with everything else a lot. Like, you could really tell if you got an apple in your bite or not, whereas the other parts had more subtle differences. I'm not sure if there is a good way to make the apples taste more like everything else, and everything else taste slightly more of apples, but unless I can they're out.

A few possible ideas for next time: try mincing everything small and see if I like the texture better; try adding dry cranberries; maybe try cornbread; maybe try browning the onions; search for other mystery ingredients (nuts? other veggies?).

Oh, last thing, unrelated: I discovered that you can make mashed potatoes out of steamed potatoes, rather than boiled potatoes. This is really good, because I'm sure they tend to be more nutritious, since not all of the vitamins drain into the water. I don't think I can go back.