Adventures In Crisp Delights
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Ah, summer…so much variety available in terms of fresh fruit and berries. And my favorite way to eat a fruity dessert is in the form of a crisp. For the uneducated, a crisp is a baked dish where the bottom layer is fruit or berries, sweetened as desired, and the topping is a combination of butter, brown sugar, and quick oats or nuts.
The topping is very easy to make and can be made ahead and kept in the fridge for a couple weeks. In the winter, I enjoy using canned fruit to make a quick crisp, but in the summer, fresh fruit is the way to go.
The crisp ingredients are simple and really a matter of proportion rather than specific measurements. The formula is: one part butter, two parts brown sugar, and four parts either quick oats or chopped nuts. Let the butter soften at room temperature, and then use a fork to mash it together with the sugar until it forms a paste. Then mash in your oats or nuts and it’s ready to use.
If you are using an oat topping, you can put it over the fruit and bake it all together until the fruit is tender. If you are using a nut topping, the nuts will burn if they are in the oven too long. So for a nut topping, I’d recommend baking the fruit layer until it’s 5-10 minutes from being done, then adding the nut topping. You can bake however you like, but I usually bake at 350º until the berries are bubbling or the fruit is tender.
Also if you decide to do a nut topping, my personal opinion is that pecans or almonds are the best choice. I find walnuts to be too bitter, I don’t love hazelnuts or pistachios, and peanuts and cashews don’t have the right flavor profile. Don’t even get me started on the evil Brazil nut. I like my old-fashioned chopper for chopping the nuts…the only thing I didn’t like about it is that the receptacle had no measurement markings. So I poured water into the receptacle 1/4 cup at a time, and used a sharpie to mark the measurements. Problem solved!
For this blog post, I made a couple individual servings of crisp. First up, I had some sublime fresh apricots from an area farm. I cut those in half and nuked them in the microwave just until they were tender (and soooo fragrant!). Then I covered them with the nut crisp topping and baked them in the oven for about 5 minutes. Absolutely delicious.
Next, I used a pint of blueberries (from the same area farm), sprinkled them with a little bit of flour (to thicken up the juices a bit), covered them with the oat crisp topping, and baked them until the berries were bubbling, which took roughly 30 minutes. Also delicious. And so fast and easy! I have some leftover topping in the fridge, just waiting for the next time I can hit my local farmer’s market and come home with edible treasure.
