Connecticut · Dessert
Nutmeg Apple Crisp
- Easy
- 70 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, richness that coats and comforts, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 1.2kg apples, peeled and sliced thick
- 100g sugar
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp fresh-grated nutmeg
- For the topping: 150g rolled oats, 150g flour, 165g brown sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, 170g cold butter, cubed
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toss the apples with sugar, lemon, cinnamon, and nutmeg and pile into a buttered baking dish.
- Rub the topping ingredients together with your fingers to rough clumps, leaving some butter in pieces.
- Scatter over the apples without pressing down.
- Bake at 190C for 45-50 min until the topping is deep gold and the juices bubble at the edges. 50 min
- Rest 20 min and serve with cream or vanilla ice cream. 20 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Rubbing fat into flour 47 recipes
- The fat is cold when it starts and still firm when the rubbing stops, and the bowl has not warmed under the hands.
- Stopped early, while it still looks like coarse crumbs with pieces of fat visible in it, not worked on to a smooth even sand, which means the pieces have gone.
- Nothing is greasy or glossy and nothing has smeared into a paste against the side of the bowl.
- Liquid added last and only enough to bring it together: pressed, it just holds, with no wet patch and nothing sticking to the hand.
- Rested cold before it is rolled or shaped, so the gluten relaxes and the fat firms again after being handled.
Where it goes wrong The fat was too warm, or it was rubbed until the mixture looked uniform. Once the fat has melted into the flour there are no solid pieces left to steam apart in the oven, so the bake is sandy or tough instead of flaky, and nothing done later puts those layers back.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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