In the land of "things I've never made", live many, many dishes...
Fruit crisps are among the long list of inhabitants in that world. How can that be? Well, I've never been one for fruit desserts growing up. I was always the girl who preferred chocolate without fail. I'm basically still that girl but I've expanded my horizons, and my palate, quite a bit in the last few years to include a taste for a wider variety of things.
Fruit crisps are among the long list of inhabitants in that world. How can that be? Well, I've never been one for fruit desserts growing up. I was always the girl who preferred chocolate without fail. I'm basically still that girl but I've expanded my horizons, and my palate, quite a bit in the last few years to include a taste for a wider variety of things.
Why not make more than one kind: Individual pear (left) and apple (right) crisps baked together |
This past weekend, we went apple picking. It was more like apple, pumpkin, and tomato-picking (I not-so-secretly enjoy picking the grape and cherry tomatoes best of all and now have an extra batch of roasted tomatoes stowed in the freezer). The fresh apples we walked away with, as well as this Fall season, inspired me to tackle fruit crisps. They always appealed to me on a small scale - being less complicated than pie and more manageable for my family and I to polish off (though we couldn't convince the little man to join in...he's currently like his mother when it comes to a preference for chocolate over fruit, I'm afraid).
I used a Bartlett pear and a combination of Golden Delicious and Macoun apples for my individual crisps |
Then I got to thinking: why just limit it to apples? I have not forgotten pears since I talked about it about this time last year and I've been making sure to buy and eat plenty of them. So I thought I'd make two individual-portion crisps - a pear and an apple. I used the same streusel topping for both - a classic combination of oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter. I also added some chopped walnuts because, for me, nuts usually make things better!
For the apple crisp, I tossed the thinly sliced apples with some cinnamon and brown sugar.
![]() |
Digging into the apple crisp |
For the pear crisp, I coated the diced pears with granulated sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, and a teeny bit of freshly grated ginger for a little zip.
![]() |
The pear crisp |
And when in doubt, add ice cream! Warm desserts just scream out for a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Anything 'a la mode' works for me.
I can now check fruit crisps off my things-to-make list. Never mind that there are something like ten thousand other things on that list!