Apple Crisp Recipe - Celebrating Sweets (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between an apple crisp and an apple crumble? ›

Like an apple crisp, an apple crumble is a baked fruit dessert with a layer of topping. But unlike the crisp, the crumble topping rarely includes oats or nuts. Instead, a crumble's topping is more like streusel, made with flour, sugar and butter.

What Makes A Good Apple For Apple Crisp? The best apples for baking keep their structure under heat, which prevents the chunks of fruit from turning into mush after baking. The firm and crisp Granny Smith and Honeycrisp varieties are popular apples to use in apple pies and apple crisps.

Baking: Start baking the apple crisp covered with foil. This allows the apples to soften without any risk of the topping over-browning. After about 20 minutes, remove the foil and let the crisp finish cooking uncovered. Once the juices are bubbling, the topping is golden brown, and the apples are tender, it is done!

Adding cornstarch and flour to the apple mixture will help bring your crisp's filling together. You want to make sure you have a nice balance of the sweet and tart in your dessert.

The main reason your crumble topping isn't crunchy is probably because you haven't used Demerara sugar. Although, it could also be that you've got your topping ingredient quantities wrong: either too much or not enough flour and butter alongside the sugar.

1 pound of apples will make about 3 cups sliced or cubed. 4 tennis ball-sized apples weigh about a pound.

Generally speaking, one pound of roughly chopped apples yields four cups.

If the recipe calls for 6 cups of sliced apples, you'll likely need about 8 medium-sized apples, or about 2 pounds of medium-sized apples. Now go fill your home with the scents of the season and bake the day away.

Bake the apple crisp until the fruit is bubbling and the topping is golden brown and crisp, about 45 minutes. Serve the crisps warm with vanilla bean ice cream or fresh whipped cream, if desired.

Can I cut apples the night before for apple crisp? ›

We prefer to prep the apples when we make the crisp, but you can prep them ahead of time. Peel and slice the apples and toss them with lemon juice, then pack tightly in freezer bags and refrigerate for up to one day.

Use cold, cubed butter.

Making the crumble with room temperature or melted butter will cause the topping to spread as it bakes, rather than creating a landscape of craggy, crunchy sweet pieces. Using cold butter will help all the crumble ingredients bind together before baking and then saturate them evenly in the oven.

Use Overripe Fruit

Even if you choose the perfect apple variety, if the fruit is overripe, your apple pie filling will turn to mush. The perfect apple pie filling is not too sweet. It has just the right amount of tartness to offset the added richness of brown sugar and cinnamon.

The lemon juice will keep the apples from turning brown. Set your prepared apple crisp aside on the counter until ready to bake. Put the apple crisp in the oven to bake just as you are serving dinner. And by the time dinner is over, this warm syrupy dessert will be ready.

FAQ for Apple Crumble

Just watch how it comes out though - if it seems super dry and isn't holding together when you squeeze it, you can add in a little more butter.

So what's a crumble vs. a crisp? A crumble is just a crisp without oats in the streusel. It may feature nuts, but the streusel topping is usually a simple combination of butter, flour, and sugar that is more clumpy than that of a crisp.

Cobbler: A fruit dessert made with a top crust of pie dough or biscuit dough but no bottom crust. Crisp/crumble: In Alberta, the terms are mostly interchangeable. Both refer to fruit desserts similar to cobbler but made with a brown sugar streusel topping sometimes containing old-fashioned rolled oats.

Whereas crisps and crumbles are topped with a streusel-like mixture, cobblers are topped with a cake-like batter or a biscuit-like dough.

This has led some historians to believe that Betty was the name of the cook and creator of the recipe and that brown was in reference to her skin color.