Easy Apple Crisp Recipe

Name: Easy Apple Crisp Recipe
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 50 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 5 medium granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and chopped; 1 stick butter, unsalted and softened; ¾ cup brown sugar; ¾ cup flour; ¾ cup oats; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon nutmeg

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Apple Crisp is Apple pie flavor without all the Apple pie hooplah! This Easy Apple Crisp recipe is a delicious dessert anybody can make. This is really simple and if you want a no-fuss dessert with comfort food feelings, try this recipe.

Apple Crisp in a bowl with vanilla ice cream and a tray in the background — Have some Apple Crisp with ice cream for dessert!

🥧 What makes this recipe special?

Apple Crisp is a recipe for the people. It is so simple, but still so tasty. If you have a tough time making crusts or don’t have any crusts on hand, this might be the recipe for you.

Honestly, there really isn’t much to Apple Crisp and that is the beauty of it. As long as you have some apples and a few other common ingredients, you can make a top shelf Apple Crisp in no time.

If you are looking for pies, check out this rhubarb pie, dutch apple pie, blueberry pie, or this American Apple Pie recipe. This would be a great dessert for something like a grilled ribeye steak. Whatever you decide to cook, make sure to treat yourself.

Jump to:

🥧 What makes this recipe special?
🍏 Ingredients
🍲 Instructions
🤷 Substitutions and variations
🍨 Best Served With Ice Cream
📦 Storage
🎓 History tidbit
❓ FAQ
📝 Tips and tricks
🛠 Products used in this recipe
😋 Did you make this recipe?
📖 Recipe
💬 Comments

🍏 Ingredients

This has all of the apple pie flavors without the pie part of it.

Granny smith apples
Butter
Brown sugar
Flour
Oats
Cinnamon
Nutmeg

See the recipe card for quantities.

Kinds of Apples to Use For Apple Crisp

Like the other recipes we have shared in our apple series, we are sticking with two different kinds of apples that I think would be good for apple crisp. Braeburn and Granny Smith apples. For this particular recipe, I am using granny smith apples.

Granny Smith apples keep a nice, firm texture and are sweet enough. Sure, they tend to be tart, but remember that we are adding a boatload of sugar to this dessert. Granny Smith Apples will work just great.

🍲 Instructions

If there is any nuance to an apple crisp, it is the butter. In a traditional apple pie recipe with a butter pie crust, we want the butter to remain whole. When the butter cooks in the flour, it evaporates and creates that flakey texture and test in the pie crust. We don’t need that in our apple crisp recipe.

In fact, I learned a lesson. I tried to use butter how I have been using it in the pies and it only caused problems. For our apple pie crust, we use a butter crust that calls for putting the butter in the freezer.

Process for making an apple crisp. — Clean the apples, prepare the toppings, add the toppings to the crip and then bake.

For this recipe, however, we are softening the butter and mixing it in with our streusel topping. Softened butter is probably one of the most important parts of this recipe.

🤷 Substitutions and variations

There are a few ways you can change this recipe up.

Granny Smith Apples - This recipe calls for Granny Smith apples, but these could be substituted with whatever you have.
Brown Sugar - Did you know you can make your own brown sugar just by adding molasses to white granulated sugar? Sure thing. You could also substitute the ¾ cup of brown sugar with ½ cup of maple syrup or honey.

🍨 Best Served With Ice Cream

While I think ice cream is great for most apple desserts, I think it becomes a bit more important in our apple crisp. I think a great apple pie can rely on the crust to bring a delicate and interesting flavor and texture to the pie.

With apple crisp, however, we are beating people over the head with the apple and I think a nice creamy ice cream can balance that flavor and texture.

Overall, I am a big fan of apple crisp and it has been a fairly regular dessert in our household for several years. To be honest, we have an apple tree in our yard and we end up looking for ways to use all the apples.

The apples are fairly tart, but this recipe allows us to easily and handily use the apples from our tree. If I don’t go pick them, they drop to the ground and then I have an abundance of rotten apples AND hornets. That is no fun.

📦 Storage

This will keep in the refrigerator for three to four days. Also, this can be froze and will keep well.

🎓 History tidbit

Most of the early apple varieties in America were more intended for hard cider and not for eating. In fact, Johnny Appleseed was more known for apples intended for cider than the eating varieties. During the period of prohibition, apple trees intended for cider-making were even destroyed.

❓ FAQ

What is the difference between apple pie and apple crisp?

Imagine a perfect traditional apple pie. Now, take just the guts of that apple pie and put that on a plate. Then, add in a beautiful oatmeal streusel topping to it. Bingo, bango, bongo… Apple Crisp. Apple crisp is an easy version of an apple dessert that almost anybody can make with common ingredients from around the kitchen.

What are the best apples for apple crisp?

Granny Smith apples work marvelously for apple crisp. Braeburn or honey crisp are fine, too. Granny retains crispness very well.

📝 Tips and tricks

Use Granny Smith apples for the best results
Learn how to use the power function on your microwave to master softening. For me, I put a stick of butter in the microwave and cook for 30 seconds on power level three.
Serve with vanilla ice cream.

🛠 Products used in this recipe

😋 Did you make this recipe?

That is awesome, and thank you so much for giving this Apple Crisp recipe a try. If you could leave a rating in the comment area below, it would be greatly appreciated. This lets me know how I am doing and also helps others decide if they want to make this recipe. Most of all, thanks for visiting Ramshackle Pantry.

📖 Recipe