TWD: Cran-Apple Crisps

I've never been much for crisps. If I'm going to eat dessert, I've always steered towards chocolate, peanut butter, and the like. I enjoy an occasional slice of apple pie a la mode, but generally speaking I like my fruit plain, simple, and undoctored.

So I wasn't particularly excited about this TWD recipe (chosen by Em of The Repressed Pastry Chef - a super cute blog!) Mr. LITK on the other hand, he like fruit desserts. So I figured if nothing else he was sure to like it. Well I was wrong... he loved it! And I thought it was pretty tasty too!


I quartered the recipe and split it into two ramekins. As you can probably guess by the name, the recipe calls for diced apples and whole cranberries, as well as dried cranberries or raisins. The crumble is a basic mix of flour, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon... with the addition of coconut and ginger (yum!). I had most of the ingredients, but no cranberries.... so off I went to the grocery store.

Now I live in a major metropolitan area. And I go to one of those giant chain grocery stores (Dominicks's if you must know). So one would think that I could find just about anything. Wrong. Remember the marscapone from a few recipes back... no where to be found. I was expecting, what with Thanksgiving right around the corner, that cranberries would be in great abundance. I checked the produce section: no fresh cranberries. Then I checked the freezer section: no frozen cranberries. Then I asked a remarkably friendly clerk: he looked at me like I was crazy and directed me to the jellied cranberry. So I had to improvise. I bought a can of whole cranberry sauce, thinking I could strain off the sauce and have whole cranberries left. What I learned was that whole cranberry sauce is basically jellied cranberry... with a few berries scattered throughout. And its not meant to be strained. But I managed to get a few cranberries out of it, and added in some dried cherries and the raisins.


Overall it turned out to be a nice mix and the crisps were delicious. We ate them hot out of the over with a big dollop of whipped cream - yum! Definitely a great cold weather treat!