Warm Ginger Apple Crisp

Fruit crisps are one of my very favorite desserts and are one of the simplest things to make.  There's no crust involved, just lots of delicious crumbles that go on top of fresh fruit and get crispy as they bake.  People sometimes confuse crisps and cobblers.  Crisps are usually a topping of brown sugar, oats, flour, and butter, whereas cobbler is a pastry type topping, similar to biscuits.  Both are very good, but crisps are just what I prefer.

This recipe is for apple crisp, but you can use any fruit you like.  If you do not have ramekins or want to make one large apple crisp, just use a 9 x 13-inch baking dish instead.

Ingredients:
3 Granny Smith apples
3 sweet apples of your choice (I used Gala)
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice

For the topping:

3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
6 ginger snaps
1 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 stick salted butter, chilled, cut into small pieces, plus 1 Tbsp. to butter ramekins

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Peel and core apples, slice thinly and place in a large bowl. Sprinkle sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice over apples and gently toss to combine. Set aside.

Place ginger snaps in a Ziploc bag and crush with a rolling pin or a meat mallet. Alternatively, you could run them through a food processor or a blender. Combine oats, ginger snaps, brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut in butter until it resembles coarse crumbs.  Set aside.

Lightly butter ramekins and placed on a rimmed baking sheet. Fill each ramekin with apples, pressing the apples down and really packing them in. Top each one with crumb topping, pressing it into the apples.  It is fine if the topping overflows (that's what the baking sheet is for).  You want to get as much as you can into each one, as the apples will bake down.

Bake in preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until the topping is a nice golden brown.

Cool the crisps on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before serving. Serve warm with your favorite ice cream. I served ours with butter pecan caramel swirl ice cream. Mmmmm!

Enjoy!

Until next time...

Lady by the Bay