The Best Fruit-Sweetened Apple Crisp
The best fruit-sweetened apple crisp. This recipe is sweetened with apples and dates, plus it's made with a hearty and nutritious spelt and oat topping. It's packed with fiber and makes for a perfect fall breakfast, snack or dessert.
Servings 8
Ingredients
- 8 medium apples, peeled (see notes)
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons water
- 2 tablespoons spelt flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
Topping
- 3/4 cup vegan butter (or butter/margarine of choice)
- 1/2 cup Medjool dates (see notes)
- 1 1/2 cups spelt flour, spoon and level
- 1 cup rolled oats
- 1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 12" cast-iron pan with vegan butter.
- Slice and peel the apples and place them in the cast-iron pan. Add the lemon juice, water, flour, cinnamon, vanilla and salt. Stir to evenly coat the apples.
Prepare the Topping
- Add the vegan butter and chopped Medjool dates to a medium bowl and mash together until well combined. You don't want any large pieces of dates.
- Add the flour, oats and salt. Stir to combine, then crumble the mixture on top of the apples.
- Bake for 40 minutes or until the apples are tender and the topping is golden brown. Serve with your favorite ice cream if desired.
Video
Notes
If your dates are too dry to mash with the butter, soak them in boiling water for 15 minutes or until soft. Remove any excess water and mash them. Let them cool before you add them to the bowl with the butter.
If preferred, you can leave the peel on the apples.
To make the apple crisp, make sure to use apples that keeps their shape during cooking. Braeburn, Jonagold, Honeycrisp, Golden delicious are all good options. I also made the recipe with Gala and Cortland apples and it turned out well.
This recipe also works with all-purpose white and whole wheat flour. To make it gluten-free, you can use brown rice flour, certified gluten-free oat flour or 1:1 gluten-free flour mix.
This recipe has been updated for better results since it was first posted in 2016. The old option had 1/2 cup of butter instead of 3/4 cup (the crisp is now much less dry). It also used 1/4 cup of dates instead of 1/2 cup and they were blended with water. You can avoid this extra step by using soft dates (the crisp also doesn't get as dark without the added water, which is great). Finally, I added a few extra ingredients to the apples to add more flavor and for a better texture. Originally, they were only mixed with lemon juice and cinnamon. If you want to make the old version, you can do that instead.