Apple Crisp
Sharp apples under a topping of oats, brown sugar and cold butter that bakes to gravel rather than paste. No pastry, no rolling, and forty minutes from bowl to table.
Photograph credit: Apple Crisp by Douglas Perkins · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Don't Make These Mistakes
Mix your apples if you can — a couple of Bramleys collapsing into sauce among firm Braeburns gives you both texture and body.
Cold butter, cold hands, and stop rubbing early. Overworked topping bakes flat and greasy.
The topping can be made ahead and frozen loose in a bag, then scattered straight from the freezer.
Making Apple Crisp
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Heat the oven to 190°C / 375°F and butter a 2.5 litre baking dish.
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Toss the apples with the brown sugar, cornflour, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt until every piece is coated, then tip into the dish and level.
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For the topping, mix the oats, flour, sugar, salt and cinnamon, then rub in the cold butter with your fingertips until it clumps in pieces the size of hazelnuts. Stop while it is still ragged.
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Stir through the nuts and scatter the topping over the apples, leaving it loose rather than pressing it down — air between the clumps is what makes it crisp.
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Bake 45 to 55 minutes, until the topping is deep gold and the fruit juices are bubbling thickly up around the edges.
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If the juices are still thin and watery at the edge, give it another 10 minutes: the cornflour needs to reach a bubble to thicken.
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Rest 20 minutes before serving, so the filling sets enough to spoon rather than run.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Why It Works
A crisp goes wrong in two places: the apples flood the dish and the topping turns to sludge. Tossing the fruit with cornflour thickens the juices as they release, and using a firm, acidic apple means the slices soften without collapsing into sauce. The topping is kept coarse and cold — rubbed to clumps rather than crumbs, with oats for structure — so the butter melts and fries the oats rather than binding them into a paste.
Storage and Reheating
Covered in the fridge for 4 days. Reheat uncovered at 180°C / 356°F for 15 minutes to bring the topping back; a microwave will make it soggy.
Serving Apple Crisp
- Vanilla ice cream
- Cold pouring cream
- Custard
Still Wondering?
How long does Apple Crisp take to make?
25 minutes of preparation and 50 minutes of cooking, plus 20 minutes of resting, so allow 1 hour 35 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 8.
Nutrition per Serving
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: optional ingredients are counted. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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