Apple Crisp

My family loves fruit crisp.  It is easy to see why.  Cut up some fruit, throw together a topping and you have a satisfying crumbly fruity goodness that is perfect with ice cream.

Peel some apples.  These ones were starting to get spots so it was a perfect excuse to make Crisp.

Time to get my slicer out.  I love this thing.  It was the first time using it for apples.  I use the square cutting blades all the time to make fries in my Actifry.

Butter your baking pan.

Look at how great that turns out!

Now get some brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon.

Sprinkle about 1/4 cup of brown sugar over your cut apples, 2 tbsp flour to soak up all the juices, and 2-3 tbsp of cinnamon.  Go nuts, it's yummy.  Mix it up a bit right there in the pan.

Now for the topping.  Rolled oats, more brown sugar and flour, and butter.

Mix equal part sugar and oatmeal together.  Toss in a couple more tablespoons of flour and mix.

It should look something like this.

Sprinkle that all over the apples.

Dot the top with butter.

Bake for 25 minutes. These apples were really juicy so the flour made a nice sauce with the juices that came out.  The butter melts on top and makes a nice chewy crisp crunch.

This is a highly enjoyed dessert in my house.  I have made this with various berries, different types of apples, but strawberries and rhubarb are my favourite.  Adjust the sugar you add to the fruit to suit your taste and the sweetness of the fruit you use.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies as Muffins? Yup!

Now that all the peanut butter crack squares are gone I'll be back to enjoying the oatmeal raisin cookies I made.  I have been limited with how I can bake cookies due to only having one small baking sheet.  I have been playing around with making cookies in muffin papers and I think it's brilliant.  I made some chocolate chipper cookies awhile back using the muffin tin and papers for the first time.  They turned out good.  I find I eat less of them because I tend to only eat one at a time instead of 2-3 like I might do with cookies.  Plus, you can prepare a bunch of them ahead of time while you are baking so you can quickly just pop out the hot ones and reload with more dough and back into the oven.

Get yourself organized.  I love to gather all my things before I start a recipe.  It is easier than looking around for things as you go and I am less likely to miss an ingredient.  I tried to make bread without adding yeast once, not good.

Cream the brown sugar and margarine together.  They should be a nice light fluffy brown colour.

Add the eggs, one at at time, until they are well incorporated.  I would normally do this part in my stand mixer but it is in a train yard here in Mississauga waiting to be delivered.  I'm scheduled for tomorrow so I'm pretty happy about that!  My arms can't take anymore hand beating with just a whisk! It's barbaric!

Now you can add in all the dry ingredients.  Start with the flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder.  Mix those into the brown sugar mixture until just combined.

Now add in all the oats and raisins.  Don't get scared, it will look like it will never combine but it will, trust me.  My arm was burning and sore after working this all in.

See?  All good.  Now start scooping out those cookies for baking.

As I said, I have been using muffin papers and baking cookies in muffin tins.  This works really great.

The next batch is on standby.

OOOOOH Look at those!

Pop them out of the tin and set them aside to cool.

Soft and chewy.  I keep these in the freezer.  I can pop them straight into my son's lunch box in the morning or we can eat them straight from the freezer.  You can also zap them for 10-20 seconds in the microwave if you want them hot and gooey.  I personally like them cold and chewy, sort of like the cookie dough bits they put in ice cream.

Tonight for supper, I'm making chicken in Thai green curry with Jasmine rice and Parmesan asparagus so watch out for that tomorrow!