A Lip-smacking Apple Crisp Recipe That Truly Celebrates Fall

What is an Apple Crisp?

Looking for a baked fruit dessert that's as good as pie, but easier to assemble? Apple crisp is your answer.

Apple crisp is distinguished by its oat streusel topping. Streusel is a crumbly topping made from butter, flour, and sugar and is used on cakes, crisps, pies, and other desserts. The oats crisp up as the dessert bakes, making the streusel delightfully crunchy.

Apart from cooked apples, oats, sugar, flour, and butter, an apple crisp also includes cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and brown sugar. This dessert contains rhubarb, which provides a tarty flavor that contrasts beautifully with the apples. In addition to apples, fruit crisps can be made with pears, berries, and peaches as wellbut of course, you won't call them apple crisps!

Origins of the Apple Crisp

Apple crisp is a somewhat recent addition to cookbooks. It was only in 1924 that it appeared in print when a recipe for apple crisp was published in Everybody's Cook Book- A Comprehensive Manual of Home Cookery, edited by Isabel Ely Lord. The same year, the dessert appeared in the Appleton Post Crescent, a newspaper.

The popularity of apple crisps surged during the Second World War when access to pastry ingredients for apple pie, America's favorite dessert, dropped thanks to food rationing. Apple crisp is easier to make than apple pie and uses very basic ingredients, most of which are repeated in both the apple crisp layers.

The apple crisp has, today, become an integral part of the American tradition, especially during the autumn months when apple supply is plentiful. The dessert is popular in the UK and Canada as well.

Is Apple Crisp the Same as Apple Crumble?

Apple crisp is closely related to apple crumble. Both are baked fruit desserts and resemble each other in appearance, texture, and taste. In both, fresh apples have a pastry topping with apple juices bubbling up into the pastry as it bakes. This gives the crisp and crumble a unique pockmarked appearance.

However, the two desserts do have a degree of difference and that's related to the toppings they use. Crisps contain oats in the topping and it is oats that give the dish its crispiness. A crumble, however, doesn't use oats and its streusel topping is usually a rudimentary combination of butter, sugar, and flour, making it rather clumpy. A crumble is, therefore, a crisp without the oat topping.

However, despite the difference, the similarities between the two desserts are so pronounced that they are often considered synonymous. In fact, they are held to be one and the same in Australia and the UK. In the US and Canada, on the other hand, the difference between the dishes is marked.

How to Select the Right Apples for Your Apple Crisp

If you want to make the best apple crisp on the block, pay attention to the apple variety you choose. Usually, an apple with a natural tart-sweet flavor works best, but you could also combine sweet apples with tart ones. Essentially, you want apples that can stand up to baking.

Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and Honeycrisp apples are best suited for apple crisps. You can also combine them, using Honeycrisp with either Golden Delicious or Granny Smith apples.

Golden Delicious apples are sweet, have a mellow flavor, and can hold on to their shape well even after baking.

Honeycrisps are also sweet. In fact, they are some of the sweetest apples around, and good for baking too. They have a unique juicy crispness and go well with most other apple varieties.

On the other hand, Granny Smiths are tart, making them ideal partners with sweeter apples. This variety can be used individually as well; its highly acidic nature gels well with the sweet apple crisp oat topping.

Other apple varieties for crisps include Jonagold, Braeburn, and Crispin.

The Jonagold, a sweet apple, is a cross between the Jonathan and Golden Delicious.

Braeburn apples bake up juicy but not slushy, and have an intense flavor that is able to hold its own even when mixed with spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves.

Crispin apples are sweet like the Golden Delicious, but with a slightly tart flavor to counterbalance the sweetness. Able to maintain their form when baked, they are well-suited to dishes like apple crisps that need gentle cooking. Their crisp and firm consistency makes them ideal for baking.

Ingredients for Your Apple Crisp

Old fashioned easy apple crisp

• 6 peeled and chopped apples
• 1 3/4 teaspoons of divided ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of lemon juice
• 3/4 cup of old fashioned oats
• 1 cup of light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup of all purpose flour
• A pinch of kosher salt
• 1/2 cup of cold unsalted butter (diced into small cubes)

Steps to Making Your Apple Crisp

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Apply butter on an 8X8 baking dish, or spray the dish with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.
2. Add chopped apples, 3/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, granulated sugar, and lemon juice to a mixing bowl, stirring them to combine. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish.
3. Add the ingredients for the topping (oats, brown sugar, flour, salt, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and diced cold butter to a separate mixing bowl.
4. Using a pastry cutter, slice the butter into the topping mixture. Use a little downward twisting motion till the oat mixture becomes like pea-sized crumbs. The butter may be sliced into the oat mixture using a couple of forks or even your hands.
5. Spread the oat topping over the apples in the baking dish. Pat gently to even the topping out.
6. Bake for 40-50 minutes till the apple crisp is bubbly and golden brown.
7. Serve and enjoy with salted caramel sauce and a scoop of vanilla Ice Cream.

Cooking Tips and Tricks

Make sure to distribute the butter evenly with the apple crisp topping. The melted butter helps the ingredients crisp up on the top so that your dessert has the perfect flavor and texture. Use baking powder and flour to turn the juices from the apples into a thick sauce. This ensures you don't end up with a runny dessert. When the fruit filling bubbles and the topping turns crisp and brown, you'll know that your apple crisp is done.

While baking, make sure that you don't cover the apple crisp. However, if you see that the apples aren't tender enough, but the topping is browning too fast, use a foil to cover the crisp, allowing the apples to bake without the topping getting burned.

Remember to peel and core the apples to maintain the consistency and texture of the apple crisp.

If your apple crisp is overly dry, you need to add more butter. On the other hand, refrigerate the topping containing butter before it is added to the apple crisp. Refrigerating the topping even for a short while will make it crisp.

It is important to store your apple crisp in the refrigerator to prolong its shelf-life. Cool it for 10 minutes before serving and when you are done eating, cover the leftovers well and refrigerate. An apple crisp can stay fresh and safe in the refrigerator for a week or so. Furthermore, prior to or after baking, apple crisps can be stored in the freezer, where it lasts for two to three months.

Before serving, thaw the apple crisp in the refrigerator overnight. Then heat the crisp in the oven at a low temperature until it is warm.

If you want your apple crisp to be gluten free, replace the baking powder and flour with gluten-free ingredients. You could also opt for gluten free oats.

Grand Pairing- Apple Crisps Make Cheesecakes Better

Apple crisp is a decadent dessert that can be enjoyed as a standalone feast. It can also be added to other food items to make them distinctively better. For example, you could have a combination of apples, a crisp topping, and a creamy cheesecake. Here's a delicious apple crisp Cheesecake Recipe for you to try out-

Ingredients-

For the crust-

• 2 cups of cinnamon graham cracker crumbs
• 6 tablespoons of melted butter
• 1/4 cup of granulated sugar

• 2 (8-ounce) packages of softened cream cheese
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 2 large-sized eggs
• 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour

• 3 peeled and diced apples
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/4 cup of brown sugar

• 1/2 cup of quick oats
• 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter
• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Place a large-sized sheet pan on the bottom rack and fill half of it with water.
2. Line a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper.
3. Combine the graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, and sugar. Evenly press the mixture at the bottom of the springform pan.
4. Beat the sugar and cream cheese until they turn highly creamy. Add vanilla, flour, and cinnamon and thoroughly mix.
5. Add the eggs and combine till all the ingredients mix in. Be careful not to overmix the batter.
6. Place the cheesecake now onto the prepared crust.
7. Stir the diced apples together with cinnamon and brown sugar. Set aside.
8. In a bowl, add the topping ingredients. Stir until they mix completely. Using your hands, press the mixture into large-sized crumbs.
9. Gently spoon the apples onto the cheesecake batter. Evenly sprinkle the topping over the apples.
10. Directly place the springform pan on the oven rack over the pan of water. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes.
11. Remove the apple crisp cheesecake from the oven and place it on a wire rack. Cool for five minutes and then loosen the cheesecake from the pan by running a knife around its outer edge.
12. Cool for an hour. Place the apple crisp cheesecake in the fridge for six hours or overnight for it to chill completely.
13. Serve the dessert with Cool Whip, caramel, or apple pie spice (made from cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and cardamom).

Apple Crisps Teach You How to Cut Food Waste

Around 80 billion pounds (or 40 million tons) of food is wasted by Americans every year. When compared with what the world wastes (1.4 billion tons every year), America's contribution to food waste is huge.

This comprises as much as 30-40% of the total food supply in the country, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

It translates to around 219 pounds of food waste per person annually. And consider this- according to commercial waste management company RTS, over 650 average-sized apples are thrown away by every person in the US!

Speaking of apples, perhaps you throw away your kids' half-eaten apples when they can no longer finish them. Or maybe you yourself trash 3/4ths of the apple that mad your mid-morning snack. Instead of trashing perfectly good food, all you need to do is trim the teeth-marked parts and portions that have started to brown. You'll be surprised at how much you are able to salvage. Slice the usable parts into cubes, add up the cubes, and make yourself an apple crisp.

You can create this dessert easily and quickly, without fancy ingredients. Your family will thank you for a delicious dessert and the planet will thank you for reducing Food Waste.