This time of year we all start to get a little nostalgic about apples. Even if you don’t live in a region where apple picking is rampant, you start to crave them–as a crisp raw snack, maybe, or in a beautiful French tart glazed with apricot found in a charming patisserie, or just as easily in a good ol’ fashioned American bought at a farmer’s market.
But we far prefer to make apple creations ourselves–that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? It means you get the bonuses of A) a sweetly perfumed house, and B) scarfing it down when it’s still perfectly hot out of the oven.
But–and this is a big but–that doesn’t mean we want to spend three hours on our feet running around in the kitchen. And nor should we have to. Not when there’s such a creation as apple crisp, anyway. It’s just as addictively delicious (if not more so) than all those fancy masterpiece pastries, has the same crowd wow factor as all of them, takes no more than 20 minutes to throw together, and takes almost zero culinary skill. In the home cooking world, we call that a win-win-win-win. Enjoy.
Classic Apple Crisp
1/4 cup powdered sugar
To make:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease a 9 x 13 inch pan and spread the sliced apples in it.
In a medium-sized bowl, mix the white sugar, 1 tbsp. flour and cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Pour the water evenly over all and mix.
In a bowl, combine the oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture with your fingers.
Cover with tinfoil and bake for about 35 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes, until the topping browns.
Remove from oven and, while still warm, slice and sift powdered sugar over each slice.
Serve warm… ideally topped with a scoop of your favorite vanilla ice cream!
