Recipe: Fruit Crisp

Fruit crisp is such a delicious and satisfying dessert, it’s hard to believe how easy it is to make! We make it whenever we have people over for dinner or want to make something extra for dessert – it’s great served warm with vanilla ice cream, or even cold leftovers the next morning (the fruit means it definitely counts as breakfast, right?). 

Like our cinnamon apples, when we make a crisp at school we usually get fruit from our dining hall. We tend to use apples most often, but berries and peaches work well too! You can even combine various fruits – blueberries and peaches are one of our favorite combinations. 

Recipe: Fruit Crisp 

Makes 6-8 servings; recipe is for a 9”x13” pan. If serving a different number of people, adjust pan size and ingredient amounts accordingly. 

Ingredients: *

• Fruit of choice (we recommend blueberries, peaches, or apples!) 
  • Use enough to fill your pan almost to the top and leave room for the crisp topping. For a 9”x13” pan, about four quarts of berries or sliced fruit is a perfect amount.
• White sugar 
  • 2 tbsp
• Cornstarch 
  • 2 tbsp 
• For the topping:
  • Flour 
    • 1 cup 
  • Oats 
    • 1-1 ½ cups 
  • Cold butter or margarine 
    • 1 stick (½ cup) 
  • Brown sugar
    • ¾ cup 

Preheat oven to 350℉. Wash fruit. Grease your pan with butter, margarine, or cooking spray and slice the fruit directly into the pan. Sprinkle cornstarch and white sugar over top. To make the topping, cut the cold butter or margarine into the flour using a food processor (if you don’t have a food processor, cut the butter into small chunks and mix with flour until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Use a pastry cutter, butter knives, or a fork, but not your hands, as the heat from your hands will cause the butter to soften). Add the oats and brown sugar to the flour/butter mixture and combine, then sprinkle on top of the fruit. Bake until the fruit is soft and the topping is crisp, about 45 minutes. If desired, serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Enjoy! 

*All measurements are approximate, and can easily be adjusted to suit personal preference. To adjust quantities, it’s important to understand the purpose of each ingredient:

• Fruit: the foundation of the crisp. Adjust quantity depending on how many people you’re serving/how big your pan is. 
• White sugar: supplements the natural sweetness of the fruit. If you want a sweeter crisp, use slightly more sugar; if you want less sweetness, use slightly less. 
• Cornstarch: helps thicken the juice released by the fruit as it cooks. This allows the crisp to be gooier, rather than liquidy. The amount of cornstarch used depends on personal preference and how much liquid the fruit will release as it cooks; berries tend to release more, and will therefore need more cornstarch, while apples need very little or no cornstarch at all. 
• Flour: part of the base for the topping. Coats the butter and helps hold the topping together. 
• Oats: part of the base for the topping. As the crisp bakes, the butter will melt onto the oats and make them crispy. If you need to increase the amount of topping you’re making, increase the oats and butter but not the flour (to keep the topping from being too dry or floury). 
• Cold butter/margarine: melts as it bakes and makes the crisp “crispy.” The colder the butter, the better; you want it to melt in little “pockets” as it bakes, and keeping it cold will help with this. 
• Brown sugar: adds sweetness to the topping and adds to the crispiness of the topping by caramelizing as it bakes.

❤ Juliana and Sarah