Quarantummy: Five-ingredient apple crisp

I don’t really do dessert. I will bake a chicken, I will make a stew, I will mash vegetables, but I will not bake a cake unless all I have to do is use cake mix. Maybe it’s because I don’t really look for dessert. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I enjoy chocolates and cake and pie, but I don’t crave them enough to want to make them.

Besides, I have far too many friends who are excellent bakers!

However, we had a bajillion apples at home, and I didn’t want them to go to waste. So I looked for an easy recipe, and I found this.

I’m happy to say it was easy enough that prep time took about 30 minutes, and it baked in the oven while we were having dinner. After dinner, it dinged, and we had it for dessert!

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups, divided – The recipe suggested rolled oats or quick-cooking oats, but I used instant oats and they worked fine.
• 6 cups sliced apples – I used Fuji apples.
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt, divided – I just used rock salt, haha.
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup + 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 6 tbsp unsalted butter, slightly softened and divided

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Grease a small baking dish with butter or non-stick cooking spray. I used a glass baking dish, and sprayed it with canola oil.
3. The recipe says, “Add 1 cup oats to a food processor. Blend until it resembles flour. Set aside.” I used a blender, and it worked out fine.
4. The recipe says, “Toss apples with 2 tablespoons of the oat flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, cinnamon, and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Cut 2 tablespoons of butter into cubes. Toss with apples. Transfer to prepared baking dish.” I just put all the ingredients in my baking dish and mixed everything there.
5. “Add remaining oat flour, oats, salt, brown sugar and cinnamon to a medium bowl. Use fingers to cut butter into the flour until the butter is distributed and the mixture is crumbly.” This one I did not do properly. I just used my hands to mix everything, and I should have melted the butter a bit more, so that the mixture would be less powdery and more crumbly.
6. Sprinkle the crumble on top of the apples. Bake until brown and crispy, about 45 minutes.
7. Because I did not use enough butter, or I didn’t mix the crumble well enough, parts of the crumble were still dry and powdery after 45 minutes. I sprayed the dry spots with my canola spray, and baked it for another ten minutes.

It was lovely while it was warm, and the vanilla ice cream was an excellent partner. Lucas didn’t like the cubed apples, but he loved the crumble! So Oneal scraped off some crumble and put it in a bowl with ice cream, and Lucas was perfectly happy.

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I think, next time, I will do better with the crumble, perhaps a bit more butter or melt the butter a bit more so that it mixes better. I think the amount of sugar in this recipe was just right.

Some recipes advise adding a bit of water, maybe one fourth or one half cup, to help the apples get a bit softer and more gooey. I think I will give that a try.

My friend Mary Ann gave me a really easy formula for pie crust, so I may give that a shot too. If that’s a success, you’ll definitely see a post about it on this blog!

In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my apple crumble and vanilla ice cream.

Important note: Oneal said it tasted even better the next day, because the texture of the crumble seemed to be improved by spending the night in the fridge!