3 Apple Crisp

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we had a lot of sliced apples left over from the cupcake party, and we wanted to use them right away.  We were thinking maybe an apple pie, but no one wanted to spend the time or energy making a pie crust.  I started looking in my iPhone version of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything app, and came across this recipe for apple crisp.  We made it, and everyone raved about how good it was.  We made it with the optional shredded coconut and chopped pecans and served it hot over vanilla ice cream.  As you can see, we made short work of it!

You'll need:

6 cups sliced apples
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbls fresh lemon juice (1/2 lemon)
2/3 cup brown sugar or to taste
5 tbls cold butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup rolled oats (not instant)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 shredded coconut (opt)
1/4 chopped nuts (opt)
dash salt

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Butter an 8" square or 9" round baking dish.  In a mixing bowl toss apples with 1/2 tsp cinnamon, lemon juice, and 1 tbls of the brown sugar, and layer evenly in the bottom of the buttered baking dish.

For the topping, combine the remaining ingredients (including remaining cinnamon and sugar) in a food processor and pulse a few times until everything is well incorporated, but not uniform.  (To mix the ingredients by hand, soften the butter slightly, toss together the dry ingredients, then work in the butter with fingers, pastry blender or fork.)

Crumble the topping over the apples and bake 30-40 minutes or until apples are tender and bubbling.  Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

By itself it's great, but with the vanilla ice cream it's absolute heaven.