Lisaopolis.comA Nurse's Journey to a Healthy and Balanced Life

It’s hard to believe autumn is almost here! The summer has flown by. Sadly I haven’t done much blogging this summer. Instead I have been working quite a bit and spending lots of time outside enjoying the warm sunny weather.

It’s almost fall now, and the apples on our very old and large apple tree are ripening at a very fast rate. I have been collecting them every couple of days, peeling and coring them and placing them cut up in small pieces in freezer bags, and freezing them.

I decided to make an apple crisp with some of the apples a couple days ago. I created my own recipe from several recipes that I have used before.

My apple crisp turned out to be everything I wanted it to be and more. The apples I used in it were tart and the brown sugar in the crisp balanced out the tartness perfectly. The pecans gave my crisp a lovely nutty flavor and crunch. I had some crisp hot out of the oven with vanilla frozen yogurt and it was divine. The perfect, it’s almost autumn dessert.

Here is the recipe.

Apple Crisp

2-3 cups peeled cored pieces of tart apples
½ cup brown sugar (not packed)
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
2/3 cup (or slightly more) all purpose flour
1/3 cup oats
1 tbsp white sugar
4 tbsp salted butter
½ cup pecan pieces
2 tsp rum extract
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl combine and apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the rum, and vanilla extracts, and stir to coat evenly.
Place apple mixture in greased baking dish (9X13 or smaller) spread evenly. In the bowl add the flour, oats, white sugar, and pecans. Mix well. Cut in the butter until it is in crumb size pieces. Pour the flour mixture evenly over the apples. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla frozen yogurt or ice cream.

This summer we moved to a super old house. The age of the house is unknown, but it is likely 80-100 years old.

The yard has very established landscaping in desperate need of some TLC. Some of the trees in need of some major care are huge apple trees. These trees produce huge amount of apples. However many are rotten, or have bugs or other creatures in them by the time they are ripe. Most of the apples that fall from the tree go directly into the compost. However yesterday I decided to try to save some. I collected as many of the best looking apples from the ground, and set to work in the kitchen peeling, cutting and coring the apples. I don’t know how many apples I used but I would guess around 20. I chopped all the good parts of the apple and set them aside.

The yard also has a few small blackberry bushes. I decided to pick some of those as well yesterday afternoon.

I found a recipe for apple crisp at joyofbaking.com and decided to give it a whirl. I made huge changes to it, and came up with this.

Apple Blackberry Crisp

Crumb Layers (bottom and top)

1 cup all purpose flour
½ cup brown sugar (not packed)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp salt
6 tbsp olive oil margarine
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
½ cup chopped walnuts

Filling

6 cups peeled cored cut up apple
1 cup of fresh or frozen blackberries
5 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp white sugar
A few shakes of cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare 9X13 baking dish.

To make the crumb mixture: In a large bowl combine all the ingredients expect the margarine and the walnuts. Mix thoroughly. Cut in the margarine. Now add the walnuts and mix well.

To make the filling mixture: Place the apple and the blackberries in a large bowl.  Sprinkle with cinnamon. Add the lemon juice and white sugar. Mix well.

Add about half of the crumb mixture to the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Set the rest of the crumb mixture aside. Now add all of the apple berry mixture to the baking dish. Top with remaining crumb mixture.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes. Serve warm plan ot with ice cream or frozen yogurt. Enjoy.

This recipe was a HUGE hit! Within less then 24 hours (with 3 people in the household) ¾ of the crisp is gone already.

I highly recommend this recipe to all apple crisp lovers. The berries make this recipe a cut above most traditional apple crisp recipes!