Apple Crisp Without Oats Recipe

Apple crisp without oats is sliced apples tossed with sugar, cinnamon and a spoon of flour, baked under a topping of flour, brown sugar and cold butter rubbed into pea-sized crumbs — 350°F for 45 minutes in a 9-inch pan. Without oats the topping bakes into a shortbread-like crust rather than a granola one, which is why the butter has to stay cold.

How to make apple crisp without oats

An oat topping and a flour topping are two different desserts. Oats bake into loose, chewy clusters; a flour-and-butter crumb bakes into a crisp, sandy layer that shatters under the spoon, closer to a streusel or a shortbread lid. People come looking for the second one because they have no oats in the house, or because someone at the table cannot eat them, or simply because they prefer it — it was the older form of the dish before oats became standard.

Two things decide whether the crumb comes out crisp or leaden:

• Cold butter, in pieces. Butter rubbed into flour while cold leaves small pockets that melt in the oven and leave the crumb open and short. Soft or melted butter combines with the flour into a paste that bakes flat and hard. Cut the butter straight from the fridge and stop rubbing while pieces the size of peas are still visible.
• Don't press the topping down. Scattered loosely, it stays a crumb; pressed, it becomes a crust that steams the apples underneath. Loose crumbs also let the apple juice bubble up through the gaps, which is where the darker, caramelised edges come from.

What replaces the oats

Nothing has to. The topping here is three-quarters of a cup of flour to half a cup of butter with two sugars — brown for the toffee note, granulated for crispness — and that is a complete streusel. Chopped pecans or walnuts, added with the flour, put back the crunch that oats would have provided, and a quarter cup of almond flour in place of the same amount of plain flour makes the crumb more tender and nutty. Graham cracker crumbs in the same amount are the other direction: a sweeter, darker, cheesecake-crust kind of top.

Ingredients

For the filling:

• 6 medium Granny Smith apples (about 2 1/2 pounds), peeled, cored and sliced 1/4 inch thick
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the topping:

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 350°F and butter a 9-inch square baking dish.
2. Toss the apple slices with the 1/4 cup granulated sugar, the tablespoon of flour, the lemon juice and the teaspoon of cinnamon. Spread them in the dish.
3. Stir the 3/4 cup flour, brown sugar, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and salt together in a bowl. Add the cold butter cubes and rub them in with your fingertips, or cut them in with a pastry cutter, until the mixture is coarse crumbs with pieces of butter no bigger than a pea. Stir in the pecans.
4. Scatter the crumbs evenly over the apples without pressing them down.
5. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is deep golden and the apples are bubbling at the edges. Rest for 15 minutes before serving; the juices thicken as it cools.

Which apples

Firm, tart apples hold their shape through 45 minutes in the oven; soft ones cook down to sauce under the crumb. Granny Smith is the reliable choice and needs the full quarter cup of sugar; Honeycrisp or Braeburn hold up nearly as well and want a little less. A mix of Granny Smith and a sweeter apple gives both structure and flavour. McIntosh and Red Delicious collapse — King Arthur Baking's side-by-side bake had McIntosh turning to chunky applesauce at a touch. The same rules apply to the apple pie filling on this site, and that filling, cooled, can go straight under this topping for a crisp with a thicker, glossier base.

Serving and storage

Warm, with vanilla ice cream melting into the crumb, is the point of the dish; Gold Medal Ribbon ice cream or a plain vanilla, and a spoon of caramel sauce if it is a special occasion. Leftovers keep three days in the fridge, covered, but the topping softens as it takes up moisture from the apples. Ten minutes uncovered in a 350°F oven brings the crispness back; the microwave does not. Freezing is not worth it — the crumb never fully recovers.