Olivia Piepmeier

Fruit Crisp

← Recipes

Monday, March 18, 2024
Categories: pantry fruit dessert breakfast
Watercolor illustration of a purple dish with handles that has a pile of stuff in it with varying shades of brown/beige. There's a spoon coming from the right with some of the brown/beige stuff in it.

inspired by NYT Cooking & King Arthur Baking

Ingredients

Topping:

  • ½ c. AP flour or almond flour
  • ½ c. old-fashioned rolled oats
  • ½ c. pecans or walnuts
  • ½ c. brown sugar
  • 1 tsp kosher salt
  • Sprinklings of complementary spices - ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, etc. (just be sure you at least get a tsp of spice)
  • 6 tbsp cold unsalted butter

Filling:

  • 5 c. fruit (things like apples, pears, peaches, & strawberries should be chopped, while most berries don’t need to be. AND if you are using pears, I might suggest cooking them down a bit first as they seem to be the most watery)
  • ¼ c. sugar
  • 1 tbsp cornstarch
  • ½ tsp vanilla or almond extract

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375F.
  2. Place a 2-quart baking dish on a baking sheet (to catch any drips).
  3. In a food processor, pulse flour, oats, nuts, brown sugar, spices, and salt once or twice to mix.
  4. Cut butter into smaller chunks and add to flour mixture, pulsing a few times until it just comes together into small crumbly clumps.
  5. In a large bowl combine fruit, sugar, cornstarch, and whatever extract you’re using.
  6. Pour fruit into baking dish and sprinkle with the topping as evenly as you can manage.
  7. Bake until the fruit is bubbling and the topping is golden, 45-60 minutes.


Thoughts

I’m shocked I haven’t posted this yet. It probably has everything to do with the fact that it’s rather ugly to illustrate. Perhaps the best foods are just piles of mush! This is made a lot in my house as the desire for desert that’s easily (or, well, less shamefully) breakfast, the fact it’s both delicious and straightforward, AND it can be made painlessly gluten-free makes this a tempting go-to. Since local apples seem to be available all year in Vermont, that’s usually what ends up going in this, but any fruit is fair game.