Peck & Pantry Apple Crisp

Before you hit the apple orchard, the bag marked "peck" always looks so small. I looked at John and said, "Should we get the half bushel?" Keep in mind there are only two of us (plus one fruit-averse dog). 

We settled on the peck. $15.00.

25 apples later we filed into the car and headed home (after stopping at a pumpkin patch and picking up an 18-pound pumpkin, which we'll respectively cook and post about later). We left with the unofficial Nashoba Valley variety pack, which included Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russett, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Macintosh, among others. 

What to do with 25 apples and so little time? We hit the pantry and fridge to see if we had all of the makings of a crisp. Luckily, we already had the following:

Old-fashioned oats

Light brown sugar

All-purpose flour

Honey

Vegan Smart Balance Light (disclaimer: neither John nor I are vegan, but this apple crisp is servable to our vegan friends out there)

Apple Cider

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Lemon juice

(We used 9 apples of mixed variety for this recipe - mostly the tart ones, but threw in a few in-season Red Delicious for shits and giggles.)

We didn't use a recipe, so I'll attempt to tell you how everything was done below. I normally don't do the "eyeballing" thing for baking, since it's pretty dangerous territory, but a crisp is somewhat hard to mess up. When in doubt, just taste things and (however hard this might be) try to be logical. A couple rules of thumb:

1) After you peel and slice the apples into cubes, coat them with lemon juice so they don't get brown. Then add enough honey to glaze the apples, sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg to taste, and toss them around in a big mixing bowl. Or, if you're ghetto like us and don't have a mixing bowl, use an oversized Joyce Chen wok. (I went to throw out the apple cores, but then John "tsk, tsk, tsk'ed" me like a grandma. These will make a cameo in a future post.)

2) Melt your Vegan Smart Balance Light (VSBL) or if you're a purist, butter (We did about the equivalent of 1/2 cup VSBL and then added in about 1/4 cup of apple cider to lighten things up a bit). Then toss it into your oats, brown sugar, and flour. Make sure the texture resembles what you'd expect an apple crisp topping to look like. If it's too runny, lay off the cider and add more oats. If it's too dry, add more cider. (I know, rocket science, right?)

3) Load the apples into a 9x13 Pyrex pan and sprinkle on the topping. Pack it down and put it in the oven at 350 for about an hour. (If the topping starts looking too brown, add some foil to the top of the pan.)

So, do I have to tell you to wait for it to cool off before eating it? We're new to this food blogging thing and aren't ready for a lawsuit a la the McDonald's Coffee Incident. 

-e