Apple Crumble (aka Apple Heaven)

Have I mentioned yet that I like apples?  A third of my previous posts already involve apples.  If you don't like apples, don't worry.  The next 6 posts that need to get posted don't include apples at all!  One has pineapple, though, and another is related to bananas.

Anyways, apples.  They're good.  They're good raw, if they're good apples, and if they aren't good for being raw, they're delicious baked.

Fun fact: Apples originally weren't used for eating raw at all, just for making cider, and, I guess, baking?  I'm not 100% sure.

When I was driving down to campus before this semester started, I stayed the night with a friend whose mom made us this dish.  Finding myself with a plethora of apples on hand a few weeks later, I asked for the recipe.  It's become my go-to way to get rid of apples since.

Unfortunately, I think the apples on my counter might be too far gone for this application.  Maybe I'll try some apple bread.

Anyways - I peeled the apples.

 Then I sliced them.

It's way easier to peel apples before slicing them - I was doing this wrong at first.  If you peel a whole apple, you can peel in circles around the apple and get more in one fell swoop.  My mom can occasionally peel the whole apple without stopping / breaking the peel spiral.  I'm not quite there yet.  (We use a very sharp knife for peeling, by the way.)

Once the apples are sliced, you should pile them into a baking dish.  I like the one pictured here.  I have no idea where it came from.  Yay inherited kitchens!  But it's a darn good baking dish.  I think I'll miss it.

Oh, and you should have already buttered your baking dish, you don't want anything to stick.  Besides... butter.  Mmmm.

You also sprinkle the apples with a bit of water.  Once this is done, you can cover the apples with the topping.

 (I forgot to take a picture before putting it in the oven).

The topping is a mixture of flour, butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and, based on what I can see in the picture above, some white sugar and salt.  Though that pile that I think is white sugar might just be flour.

Spread the topping over the apples, and pop it in the oven.

I'd recommend a preheated oven.

On a completely unrelated note... even as a seasoned baker, I much prefer recipes that remind me to preheat the oven at the beginning of the recipe.  Far too often, I get to where I'm just about to put everything in the oven, and then I realize the oven isn't on.

Usually those are the times when the oven has to be at 450 or something, and takes forever to preheat.

On that note, preheating when I start and having the oven preheated long before I finish mixing...

 Well, that feels wasteful too.

Okay, you may have guessed by now, I'm just rambling and letting you drool over delicious pictures of apple crisp.  Mostly, I want to have enough words to fill the blank spaces around the pictures, because words!

The crisp is delicious, though.  As I'm sure you can tell by this picture.

 Its best served with ice cream.  In this case, it was served with the ice cream that had been in our fridge since the start of the year.  The rest of that ice cream might still be in the fridge - we're not huge ice cream eaters around here.

The sugar and flour get all caramelized and the apple cooks and is cooked apple.  Yum.

I'm not sure how we didn't manage to finish it.

Oh right, because there were about 6 apples in this batch, and 4 of us.  And we'd just finished a large dinner.  (This was made after Not Pad Thai, which was surprisingly filling, for all it was gross).

I don't want to give this recipe out because it isn't public or mine to give, but it's a basic apple crisp without oats, so something like this will do.

Happy appling!