Apple Crisp

We've still got that bag of apple-picking gems sitting around, so of course last night for dessert it had to be "find a way to bake up some apples" time.  Lol.

I was never sure what the difference was between a "crisp" and a "cobbler" -- they always seemed pretty much the same to me.  I decided it's high time I looked it up.  According to The Free Online Dictionary, a crisp is "a dessert of fruit baked with a sweet crumbly topping" and a cobbler is "a deep-dish fruit pie with a thick top crust."  I found similar definitions on other websites.  So it seems the difference perhaps between a crisp and a cobbler is in the crust; that a cobbler is more pie-like in it's topping, while the crisp's topping is more of a crumbly nature.  So, I guess what I made was a crisp.  :)

Either way, it was certainly crispy and tasty.  Here's how I did it (the recipe makes 4 servings):

INGREDIENTS

• 2 medium-to-large Apples (I used a golden delicious and another red-skinned variety that I am not sure what it was -- you can read in my Apple Pie post how we have a bunch of different kinds of apples that all look similar).
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2/3 cup of oats
• 1/2 stick of Butter, cubed
• 1/4 cup of Brown Sugar
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• 4 Tablespoons of Apple Cider
• 1 more tablespoon of Butter, sliced into 4 thin pats

DIRECTIONS

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 350-degrees.

2.  Cube the apples and toss them with the 2 Tablespoons of Sugar.

3.  Put about half of the oats into your food processor and run the blade until the oats turn into oat flour (this doesn't take long at all -- maybe a minute).

4.  Add the rest of the oats, the cubed butter, the brown sugar, and as much cinnamon and nutmeg as you like.  Pulse the blade until you get what looks like a coarse, crumbly, lumpy pile of goodness.

5.  Spoon the apples into each of 4 ramekins.

6.  Then cover the apples with the crumb topping.

7.  Pour about one Tablespoon of apple cider into each ramekin, then top each one with a thin pat of butter.

8.  Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the crumb topping is crispy and golden brown.

9.  Allow them to cool for just a few minutes, then top with a scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream and serve.

AND IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW
Each serving (including a half-cup scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream) has:

• 350 calories
• 4 grams protein
• 49 grams carbs
• 17 grams fat
• 4 grams fiber
• 122 mg sodium