Apple Crisp

Recently I baked a whole lot of apple crisp with my grade 5/6 students. They each got to peel, core and chop an apple, and then they got to eat their first apple crisp – and loved it! A little bit of vanilla ice cream on top made it a perfect treat.

I found the recipe on ricardocuisine.com. Usually I just make up the crumble recipe, but I wanted to follow an actual recipe so I could pass it along to my students. I only altered the amount of sugar added to the apples. I don’t usually add any sugar to the apples, and in the future I would probably omit it. I prefer to have a bit of a tart taste in my apples, and leave the sweetness to the crumble.

For the apples it’s fine to use whatever kind you happen to have, but I have included Ricardo’s apple choices. I think I used pink lady apples.

What you need for the apples:

• 1 & 1/4 cups quick cooking rolled oats
• 1/4 cup  unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened

What you need for the crumble:

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 Cortland apples

• 3 McIntosh apples 

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

For serving:

• Vanilla ice cream (I used Chapman’s)

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Core, peel and chop the apples. Put them into a 20 cm (8 inch) square baking pan. Combine with the rest of the apple ingredients.
3. Combine all the crumble ingredients in a bowl and mix in the butter; I like to do this with my hands, and then I spread the mixture over the apples with my hands.
4. Bake for about 50 minutes.
5. This is best served while it’s still warm, with a little vanilla ice cream on the side.