Easier-Than-Pie Apple Crisp

This past weekend we went to a cookout at our friends' house. Despite the fact it's late October, we're still experiencing unseasonably warm weather here in North Carolina, making cookouts quite possible!

Ross, Caroline and I have known each other since 6th grade, which means we've been friends for almost 20 years, or about two-thirds of our lives. (I'm not going to dwell too long on that measure of my age!) Their relationship reads like a movie script: friends forever, even went to senior prom together, started dating three years ago (at which point us friends all breathed a sigh of relief that the inevitable had finally happened), then got married in spring 2009.  Last fall, they moved out to the country, not far from where I live (jumpy claps!) and after settling in, hosted this weekend get-together.

We were asked to bring dessert and so I made an appropriately autumnal apple crisp, cribbed from Laura at Heavenly Homemakers. Laura calls her crisp healthy, but since I found from past experience that doubling the amount of crumbly topping only improves this dessert, I'd hesitate to call my version healthy. 

However, this recipe is the epitome of easy and can be adapted to use pretty much any kind of fruit that bakes well. And it takes hardly any time to prepare, which was good because we'd had a busy day and I kind of forgot that I was supposed to make it until 30 minutes before the cookout began!

Since we didn't eat all our apples this week, I simply grabbed five--three were Red Delicious and two were Honeycrisp--then proceed to core, slice and peel them.

If you don't have one of these cheapy apple corer/slicer tools, please, go buy one. They make life so much easier when dealing with apples!

To keep things simple, I laid the sliced apples right into the pie pan, then tossed them with sucanat and a liberal amount of cinnamon.

Aerial view of the cinnamon-sucanat-covered apples.  The chickens enjoyed the apple peels on the left later.

Next, I (hurriedly) made the topping. I love it when I don't have to cream butter and can just stir ingredients together!

Then, I spooned/mashed the crumb mixture on top of the apples.

In an effort to actually get somewhere on time, I opted to bake the crisp at our friends' house and here it is fresh out of the oven.  I know, it doesn't look radically different from the pre-baked photo, but take my word for it, it's baked. :) 

And it was a delicious way to end a lovely meal with good friends.


Erin



Easier-Than-Pie Apple Crisp 
adapted ever so slightly from Heavenly Homemakers

Filling:
5 c. sliced and peeled apples (1 medium-to-large apple yields about 1 c. sliced fruit)
2 tbs. sucanat or brown sugar
cinnamon - I don't measure, but use enough to coat the apples lightly

Crumb Topping:
1/2 c. (1 stick) butter, melted
1 c. old-fashioned oatmeal
1/2 c. sucanat or brown sugar
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. (or more) cinnamon

Tossed sliced apples with sugar of your choice and cinnamon in 8-9" pie pan or baking dish.


In a small bowl, melt butter, then stir in remaining ingredients. Spoon crumb topping over apples. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes.