Description
This Old-Fashioned Apple Crisp recipe is healthy and delicious, loaded with yummy apples, cinnamon, and hearty gluten-free oats makes for the perfect whole-food-plant-based dessert. Pure heaven!
Ingredients
Apple Base
- 4 medium Granny Smith apples, cored, peeled and cut into ½ inch thick slices, then halved.
- 1/3 cup organic maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- Dash sea salt
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice (to keep the apples from turning brown while preparing)
Oat Crisp Topping
- ¼ cup walnuts, chopped (optional)
- ½ cup rolled oats
- 1 Tablespoon oat flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon organic maple syrup
Slurry Ingredients:
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1–2 teaspoons water
Instructions
Apple Base
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Peel, core, and cut the apples into slices about ½ inch thick, (at the thickest part), then cut into halves. Think half-moons, then cut those in half. Place the apple slices into a bowl with about 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice. Splash the lemon juice over the apple slices as you work through cutting up all 4 apples.
- Once all the apples are cored, peeled, and sliced, place them in a bowl and add the maple syrup, cinnamon, and sea salt.
- In a large skillet over medium-high heat, add the apple mixture and cook for 5-10 minutes. The cooking time is largely dependent upon the thickness of the apple and texture. (See notes)
In the meantime, prepare the Oat Crisp Topping
- Place all the dry oat crisp ingredients in a bowl and mixing until well combined. Then drizzle in the maple syrup and mix well. Set aside.
- Check the tenderness of the apples in the skillet. The cooking time will vary to how “done” you like your apples. Some people like their apples really soft, while others like a little bite to them.
- Once the apples are tender to your liking, create the slurry by mixing the cornstarch with the water in a small bowl. Then move all the apples to the sides of the skillet and dump the slurry into the center of the skillet. Turn the heat up to a medium boil and cook the slurry. This will thicken the sauce the apples will bake in. Cook until the sauce slightly thickens, about 3 minutes.
- Next, dump the skillet apples into a baking dish and top with the oat crisp topping. Be sure to scrape the skillet with a rubber spatula to get all the sauce.
- Place the baking dish onto a baking sheet (to prevent bubble over spills) into a preheated 400-degree F oven and bake for 15 minutes. You want the syrup to bubble up.
- After 15 minutes in the oven, remove the baking dish from the oven and allow to cool for 20 minutes.
- Serve and enjoy! (Makes approx. 3 to 4 servings).
Notes
Skillet stove top method: The reason we start our apples on the stove top is because we are super picky about the tenderness of the apples, as well as the syrup consistency. We like the apples to be soft and tender, but not mushy. Additionally, we like the apple syrup to be slightly thick, but not runny or overly gooey. By starting the apples on the stove top skillet, you have a lot more control. If you like your apples less tender, then stop the skillet stove top cooking early, conversely if you like your apples really soft, cook them longer. Additionally, if you like a lot of syrup, add more cornstarch/water (slurry), etc. The beauty of this recipe is that you can not only taste test the recipe for flavor before it goes in the oven, but you can determine the apple tenderness so you won’t end up with crunchy apples. Cook them until they reach your level of desired tenderness. To us, there is nothing worse than crunchy apples in an apple crisp.