Ina Garten-Inspired Apple Crisp

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

The filling is either a tray of firm cubes swimming in juice, or it is applesauce. Both come from using one kind of apple.

Use two varieties deliberately. Something high in acid with a soft, low-pectin flesh — a Bramley — breaks down completely and becomes the sauce that binds the filling. Something firm — Braeburn, Honeycrisp, Granny Smith — holds its shape and gives you pieces to bite. Half and half, and the filling has both a body and a texture, which no single apple can produce on its own.

This is why supermarket "cooking apples" and "eating apples" are sold as separate things, and it is worth using both.

Oats in the topping, and cold butter in lumps

The crisp topping wants pea-sized pieces of cold butter, not butter rubbed to fine crumbs. Large pieces melt and fry the flour and oats around them into clusters; fine crumbs bake into a uniform sandy layer. Rolled oats, not instant — instant oats turn to paste.

Cornflour, and let the fruit sit

Tossed with sugar and cornflour and left twenty minutes, the apples release juice that the starch then hydrates in. Thrown straight into the dish, the cornflour stays in dry pockets and sets into gluey lumps while the rest of the juice runs free.

Do not press the topping down

Packed flat it steams from below and the underside stays raw and pasty. Scattered loosely, air gets through it and the whole layer crisps. It should look uneven going in.

Storing

Three days at room temperature, loosely covered. The topping softens overnight; fifteen minutes at 180°C brings it back. It freezes baked for two months, though the fruit loosens.